Room to grow: Zurich's citizen say it can go ahead with new runways and keep existing flight paths
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss voters were back at the ballot box Sunday 27 November, a month after parliamentary elections, to vote on a number of items that differed from one canton to the next.
Here are some of the highlights, as results flow in Sunday evening:
Swiss right loses most runoffs, Geneva rebuffs minimum wage
- The right-wing UDC lost heavily in cantonal runoffs for seats in the upper house of parliament
- Two key federal parliament upper house seats: in the closely watched key Zurich election Felix Gutzwiller and Verena Diener defeated Christoph Blocher; Blocher is a former federal councilor and led the UDC/SVP People’s Party to a dominant position in the last decade until he lost his seat in 2007, and in St Gallen UDC candidate and favourite to win, Tony Brunner, lost to Socialist Paul Rechsteiner
- Canton Geneva has voted against a minimum wage but Neuchatel has voted to include it in the canton’s constitution; Switzerland as a whole does not have a minimum wage
- Canton Vaud: Green Party’s Béatrice Métraux defeated UDC’s Pierre-Yves Rapaz for the cantonal upper house seat left vacant by the death of UDC councilor Jean-Claude Mermoud in September
In German-speaking ares: Zurich airport can grow, Zug taxes down and foreigners get mixed bag:
- Foreigners: they will not be given the right to vote at the communal level in Lucerne, but they were spared stiff requirements pushed by the UDC People’s Party in the city of Basel to require strong language skills in order to be naturalized, and Basel’s citizens also voted 3-1 to place the responsibility for naturalization in the hands of the local government rather than the parliament; in Schwyz, voters agreed, 2-1, to align its naturalization laws with federal law and put responsibility for this in the hands of communal commissions (TSR notes that this was necessary after a scandal in Emmen, Lucerne, where the communal council routinely turned down applications from foreigners from certain countries
- Zurich voted strongly against a motion that would have restricted the airport’s growth; it will now be able to add two new runways to and allow existing ones to be extended; the vote was a sharp rebuke to the officials from several communes who were behind a motion to limit flying over highly populated neighbourhoods and to restrict the airport’s growth
- Zug voted in a number of tax breaks, including doubling the reduction per child for families, from CHF9,000 to 18,000, and cutting the corporate tax rate to 5.75 percent from 6.5
- Lump-sum taxes for wealthy foreigners who reside in Switzerland will continue to be offered by cantons Glaris and St Gallen but the latter’s voters have chosen to tighten requirements.
- Smoking in Basel: voters rejected a proposal by restaurants to adopt less strict federal no smoking laws instead of the cantons, in a close vote with just 200 out of more than 23,000 deciding the issue.
Spain 2 January joins Britain, Italy and France in making its indoor cafes, bars and restaurants no-smoking areas, as part of a ban on smoking in all public enclosed spaces. The outcry by bar owners and smokers in a country where one-third of the population smokes has been loud, but the government points out that similar bans in other parts of Europe have not had the disastrous impact on business that was feared, in the long run.
Links to other sites: CNN, El Pais (Spa), GoSpain on About.com
The British government is considering a radical move to discourage young people from taking up smoking: obliging tobacco companies to drop their logos and other branding from cigarette packages. The proposal, which expected to be part of a white paper on health to be made public within days, is being welcomed by medical groups, reports the Guardian. The idea is to take the glamour out of smoking by giving cigarettes plain wrappers. The proposal was put forth early in 2010, but the new coalition government now appears to be ready to move on it. Tobacco companies are firmly opposed to any such change.
Australia is scheduled to change to plain wrappers in 2012, but the government is facing legal battles, while Canada, like the UK, is considering making the change. The US will begin to show graphic descriptions of diseases related to smoking, on packages, starting in 2012, the government announced last week.
Links to other sites: BBC, Packaging News, UK, Wall St Journal
Passive smoking falls sharply in 7 years
Strong support for smoking bans
Swiss-wide smoking ban - Photo Flickr Hance Gessell
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Twenty-eight percent of German-speaking Swiss smoked in 2009, the latest annual figures from a Swiss public health survey show, against 26 percent in Italian-speaking areas and 25 percent in French-speaking Switzerland. The rate of smoking continues to decline: from 33 to 27 percent from 2001 to 2009.
Passive smoking appears to be falling more dramatically, with 15 percent of the population exposed to other people’s smoke at least seven hours a week last year. The figure was 35 percent in 2002.
A two year-old Indonesian toddler hooked on ciggarrettes has reportedly kicked the habit.
The child became known worldwide when his mother, who said she was powerless to deny him his habit, sought help for her baby.
The AFP reports that the secretary-general of the Indonesian national commission for child protection said the child “received psychosocial therapy for one month, during which therapists kept him busy with activities and encouraged him to play with kids of the same age.”
“We diverted his addiction from cigarettes to playing,” the Secretary added.
Video of the child in early May
Smoking Baby Hooked on Cigarettes – Watch more Funny Videos
Indonesia is the only country in Asia not to have signed the World Health Organization’s framework on tobacco control. CNN has highlighted the extent to which children are affected by smoking with a story about two-year-old Aldi, a new media darling in the country who can’t give up smoking. His parents want him to stop, but not, according to health authorities because they recognize it’s bad for the child but because of the cost.
First the cantons vote to ban smoking, now the anti-ban groups want to vote on new federal law
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland adopts a country-wide no smoking ban in May, but opponents are not taking the change in stride. A group defending the cafes and restaurants, the Légitime défense des cafés romands en péril Association, 3 February delivered a petition with 80,000 signatures, from French-speaking cantons, to the Chancellery in Bern, demanding a new vote. Theirs joins a similar petition from German-speaking cantons, delivered to Bern in December, with 64,000 signatures.
Swiss voters, November 2008, rejected decriminalization of marijuana, with regional differences ("yes" votes, by percentage)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - An upper house of Parliament commission 19 January voted 8-0 in favour of fining anyone caught smoking cannabis. The lower house appears has already moved in this direction, so an ad hoc committee will now write a revision to the statutes, which will include setting the amount of the fine. The move was made after it the Swiss rejected outright decriminalization in a November 2008 vote which would have called for government control of cannabis cultivation and sales.
Parliament made it clear that it wants to change the current legal status, which calls for criminal proceedings to be open against cannabis smokers.
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Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Valais becomes a no-smoking, at least in public, canton Wednesday 1 July. Cafe and rstaurant owners, who vehemently opposed the move, are coming around to the idea, says their representative association. Gastrovalais says that 60 percent of restaurant and cafe owners now support the change in the law but more out of resignation than conviction. Eighty percent of the group, which fought to keep the law from being passed, was originally opposed to the change.
Background on smoking bans in Switzerland: “No smoke without fire in Neuchatel”, 16 June 2009, GenevaLunch
Related: Le Nouvelliste, Fre
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Canton Vaud 1 September 2009 will join the growing ranks of Swiss cantons that ban smoking in public areas. The final discussions in the cantonal parliament concluded today 23 June and the law will now go into effect.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The smoking population in Switzerland declined from 33 to 27 percent from 2001 to 2008. New figures released by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) 18 May confirm a broad downward trend across all ages and the sexes. The drop in smokers among young people aged 14 to 19 years is even more stark: 33 percent smoked in 2001, but this had declined to 23 percent by 2008.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva’s efforts to ban smoking face another political fight, with opponents to the canton’s pending legislation to ban smoking getting the necessary 7,000 signatures to force a referendum.
Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Vaud parliament’s upper house (cantonal council) has submitted to the ruling Grand Conseil its new law that will prohibit indoor smoking in public places starting 1 September 2009, reports the Tribune de Geneve. The ban, approved by voters 30 November 2008, covers administrative offices, prisons, schools, museums, theatres, cinemas, public transport, shopping malls, tents, and public buildings.
One-third of people between 16 and 24 smoke in Scotland, with the number of smokers rising alarming, a new government report shows. The figures are the highest in 10 years. BBC
Bern, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) – Nearly one in four 14- to 19-year-olds in Switzerland said they smoked in 2007, new health department statistics show, with the likelihood far higher if both parents smoke and the number of smokers rising sharply with age.
Nepal’s cancer society says 15,000 people die from tobacco consumption every year; it points a finger at the government, saying it is giving in to pressure from tobacco companies. Nepal has yet to sign the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, two years after promising to do so and to encourage smokers to cut back. Xinhua
Reuters video, India’s smoking ban India is the rare large country where smoking is still growing, and its 240 million smokers make it the world’s third largest market, but smokers now face fines for smoking in any public areas, part of the government’s efforts to reduce the one-in-five smoking related deaths.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Hopes of those who would like to see smoking banned throughout Switzerland were dashed even further Tuesday morning when the high court (Tribune fédéral) annuled Geneva’s ban on smoking in public places. The decision comes just two days after voters in Basel and Zurich approved smoking bans.
Bern, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – The political fight over allowing smoking in public is not likely to be resolved soon in Switzerland. Read more…
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Most Swiss residents under 75 years of age say they are in good health although the number of young smokers and overweight people continues to be high.
