Smoking Bans, Health and Science: A Comparative Study of Policy Networks and Smoking Policies in England, Germany and Denmark

After long trailing the American development on tobacco control, Europe has seen a big wave of public place smoking bans in the past five years, beginning when Ireland took the plunge and banned all smoking in workplaces in 2004. Inspired by the Irish development, most European countries have now introduced their own smoke-free legislation and in most cases, the main topic of debate is the question of banning smoking in bars and restaurants to protect employees and other customers against second hand smoking.The simultaneous timing of European smoke-free legislation and the general consensus on conclusive evidence against second hand smoking hide interesting comparative differences between countries, however. What may seem like petty differences between partial smoking bans on one hand and Irish-style comprehensive smoking bans with no loopholes or dedicated smoking rooms on the other, the impact on the ground level is significant. For example, while practically no bars are entirely smoke-free in Berlin, all pubs in London are. The question is what can explain these policy differences and what this tells us about the balancing of health concerns, scientific knowledge, economy and individual rights in the formation of public health policy.The paper compares England, Germany and Denmark who all adopted legislation on second hand smoking in public places in 2007, but where the English ban is as comprehensive as the Irish, the German is a minimal one with Denmark somewhere in the middle. The paper suggests these differences can be explained by looking at the formation of policy networks around tobacco control in each country and how these networks privilege health arguments differently, in particular by granting different roles for the impact of scientific knowledge on policy. The empirical argument is backed by research interviews with policymakers, anti-tobacco advocacy groups and scientists involved in the public debate about smoking in addition to material on the policy process in each country. Altogether, this analysis should help to explain the different policy paths as well as extend our understanding of the relationship between scientific knowledge and public health policy.