Smoking club
A smokers' club is an association whose main purpose is the common consumption of tobacco products. After legal smoking bans for gastronomy were enacted in Germany , which allow a restaurant to be turned into a smoking club, a large number of such clubs have been founded by restaurateurs.
In Bavaria this goal is pursued by the association for the preservation of Bavarian inn culture . In Bavaria in particular, the number of associations founded increased after the legal implementation of the ban. In mid-2008 there were already 800 smoking clubs in Munich. In Augsburg almost half, in Straubing around a third of the pubs were so-called smoking clubs.
Since the amendment of the Bavarian Health Protection Act on August 1, 2009, the clause that allowed members of smoking clubs to smoke in restaurants has been removed.
The Federal Constitutional Court saw in the privilege of smoking clubs in pubs compared to smokers who are not organized in smokers' clubs neither a violation of the freedom of action of smokers nor a violation of the freedom of the innkeepers to exercise their profession.
The North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court has ruled that it is regularly to be seen as an inadmissible circumvention of the legal smoking ban if a restaurant is essentially or even exclusively made available to members of a smoking club.
Footnotes
- ^ Herbert Reinke-Nobbe: Bavaria: Last way out smoking club . In: Focus . No. 49, December 3, 2007
- ↑ Marc Herriger: Undisturbed enjoyment in the smoking club . In: Kölnische Rundschau . September 10, 2007
- ^ Decision of August 6, 2008, 1 BvR 3198/07 and 1 BvR 1431/08 ; Netzeitung : Karlsruhe allows "smoking clubs" in Bavaria ( Memento from April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). August 12, 2008
- ^ Higher Administrative Court for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, decision of April 4, 2011, Az .: 4 B 1771/10