Calls were made this week for Berlin to follow New York state in raising the legal smoking age to 21. Johannes Spatz of anti-smoking campaign group Forum Rauchfrei told The Local why this will not be easy.
Synthetic "designer drugs," with names such as Extreme Summer, Fly Cherry or Manga XXL are increasingly finding users in Germany, especially among young men, a new government report says.
Tobacco executives are worried about requirements for more warnings on cigarettes as well as higher tax rates and a growing amount of black market tobacco, all things they say will eat into revenue.
Untaxed cigarettes and tobacco are costing the German government an untold amount of money in lost tax revenue each year, and as new fronts in tobacco smuggling open, authorities seem powerless to stem their market penetration.
Bundestag members from all sides of politics are joining forces to push for uniform anti-smoking laws nationwide, going up against entrenched opposition in many parts of the country.
Despite widespread smoking bans across Germany, more than four out of five corner pubs and bars still have patrons smoking inside, a study released Tuesday has found.
Smokers are set to cough up an average of 20 cents more per pack from the beginning of next month, the tobacco industry has announced, blaming rising costs and government taxes.
Smokers will cough up more money under a government plan to hike the tax on cigarettes to pay for an extension on tax breaks for heavy industry, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble announced Sunday night.
Germany’s drug policy commissioner Mechthild Dyckmans defended welfare allowances for alcohol and cigarettes on Thursday, saying that little indulgences were a human right.
Fewer ciggies but another beer or two? Germans are smoking less but still drinking plenty of alcohol, according a report published by the DHS centre for addiction studies this week.
An increasing number of German smokers are turning to contraband cigarettes in response to higher tobacco taxes, according to research published on Monday.
Beer sales for the first six months of 2009 have dropped to their lowest level since the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) started keeping track of the sales in 1991, the Wiesbaden office reported Thursday.
The German Medical Association is pushing to have tobacco addiction recognized as an illness, Dortmund daily <i>Ruhr Nachrichten</i> reported on Monday.
Forbes magazine recently proclaimed Angela Merkel to be the most powerful woman in the world. <b>Roger Boyes</b>, the Berlin correspondent for British daily The Times, explains why he finds it a strange choice.
Now that small German pubs can once again allow patrons to light up, <b>Roger Boyes</b>, the Berlin correspondent for British daily The Times, hopes Germany could soon be at the vanguard of Europe’s anti-anti-smoking movement.
A wide majority of Germans want a comprehensive smoking ban instead of state-by-state rules, German newspaper <I> Bild am Sonntag</I> reported on Sunday.
In a ruling likely to have nationwide implications, Germany's high court on Wednesday ruled that a new smoking ban in the states of Baden-Württemberg and Berlin was unconstitutional.
