A new Norwegian smoking ban in restaurants and bars has led to increasing numbers of smokers heading outside to puff away. Now a major tobacco producer is sponsoring outdoor heating lamps to keep them warm.

Tiedemann's Tobacco Co is giving the lamps free to Oslo bars and cafes that can't allow their patrons to smoke inside their establishments any longer. "We saw that smokers were heading outdoors," Jan Robert Kvam of Tiedemann's told newspaper Aftenposten Aften. "We wanted to help out."

Oslo was enjoying warm summer weather when the smoking ban first took effect on June 1, but temperatures have plummeted in the past week. Now, with thermometers hovering around 10C (50F) in the evening, smokers shiver while puffing outside.

Tiedemann's claims local bars and cafes have gratefully accepted the heating lamps, and its spokesman rejects suggestions the lamps violate the tough new anti-smoking law, or even the spirit of it.

"As a supplier of tobacco products, this is not a problem for us," he said. "We're getting constant requests from our customers."

Kvam won't say how many heaters Tiedemann's has given away to allow smokers to keep smoking more comfortably. Nor will he say how much the tobacco producer is investing in the project.

He views the heaters strictly as an urban phenomenon, and says Tiedemann's won't give them to bars and cafes all over the country.

While Kvam doesn't see any problem with accommodating smokers outside cafes and bars, it remains to be seen whether neighbors and non-smokers agree. Some local residents are growing irritated that smokers are spilling out onto local sidewalks, leaving the air fresher inside the bars than it is outside.

Via Aftenposten News in English. Photo by Dag Grundseth.

Freedom and Politics [15:28]