With a lot of bad press about their apparent primitive, even deceptive, ways being piped out of Greece recently, Macedonia is trying to turn the tide and win back the good will of Western Europe which many observers believe it may have lost. Macedonia’s main issue at the moment, the issue which controls their future integration into European institutions, is that of the country’s name. That battle looks to rumble on against the country’s southern Hellenic neighbours, but in the meantime Macedonia must attempt to market itself as having more in common with European success stories like Slovenia and Hungary than pariah states like Serbia and Belarus. Could banning smoking, despite being a huge tobacco producing country, be one of the bricks that goes towards building Macedonia’s bridge to Europe?

Many visitors to the Balkans note how smoking is a regional obsession. What could be more romantic that a bar just off the main street in one of the Balkan capitals, gentleman sat around discussing dissident poetry, political intrigue or their most recent success at the bookmakers, sipping on either coffee, tea or brandy, with a thick cloud of greyish blue smoke lingering above them, soaking up the developments in the conversation. Alternatively, smoking can be seen as a dirty habit carried out by people who are ignorant to the fact that they are harming their own health, and thus the state should take action. This has been Macedonia’s decision, the government extending the a current smoking ban to now include all enclosed public spaces, and pushing through a bill which will see all cigarette packs carry gruesome images of diseased organs from deceased smokers.

Slovenia already has a smoking ban in enclosed places and cigarette packs carry health warnings similar to those in the United Kingdom, far more visible than the discreetly placed messages on identical brands across the border in Croatia. For Macedonia, a country where one third of the adult population smokes at least twenty cigarettes per day, this is extremely progressive, and acts as further evidence to call into question the orientalising quips of the Greeks. Of course, a rebuff could be that this is action being taken by the government, an elite few, and does not reflect any change in public opinion against smoking. Further credence is offered to this line of thought following a survey which showed that only 5% of Macedonian smokers actually plan on giving up the habit. When forced to look at blackened lungs and diseased hearts though, maybe a few more will change their minds.

Of course, one should not be too quick to accuse the Macedonian government of cashing in politically on the smoking issue. There is the chance that the country’s leaders are entirely altruistic in their drive to decrease tobacco use, hoping to create a healthier nation. Sadly though, we do not live in the 1930s, and ideas such as creating a fit society seem to be anachronistic, belonging to 1930s propaganda films rather than the modern day given the huge number of other vices which exist and are tolerated in the country. Alternatively, maybe the government is attempting to make an investment for the future, hoping that by decreasing the number of smokers it will make healthcare easier in the years to come. Given the woeful lack of investment in basic healthcare when compared to industry and the military all across south-east Europe this also seems a little too idealistic to be true. When we look at the list of countries which already have smoking bans, including newer European Union members like Malta, Lithuania and Estonia and bedrock members such as France, Spain and Italy, it is not unreasonable that Macedonia wants to be in their company. The greatest for of flattery, after all, is imitation.

SEE Times article
B92 article
New York Times article