Fons Nijpels

Tuesday, April 20, 1999

Thank you Fons for accepting our " rendez-vous ." May I ask you to introduce yourself?

I am 53 years old and live in Rotterdam, the largest port in the world and the second largest city in the Netherlands.

My occupation is social worker and this has given me many contacts with people, often in stress situations.

I was myself a heavy smoker from about 1960 to 1978, and it took me more Than a year to quit.

This taught me about the addictive power of tobacco which operates on three levels: physical, psychological and social. I know that it is not only the nicotine that makes tobacco so addictive, but also the physical reaction of the air passages to smoke. That feeling, which smokers call
"taste", although this is a misleading term, as it is much more a kind of pain, is what you miss the most, and it left me with a desire for tobacco for a long time.

Also the social component of the addiction is in my opinion considerably underestimated. Unfortunately I still live in a social culture which is dominated by tobacco use - you are directly confronted with this when you try to quit, and this makes it very difficult to keep it up.

Because there seems to be no place for the non-smoker.

A few years after I had stopped, I began to have more and more problems with environmental smoke. The smell, and physical complaints (eyes, throat, head and air passages) were clearly the result of exposure to tobacco smoke.

I felt from my physical reactions that exposure to tobacco smoke was bad for me, and at the same time I began to wonder what the long term effects on health might be.

That was my motivation to choose for smoke-free living.

This meant that I had to rearrange my entire life.

Quite a number of social and other events had to be avoided, and I had confrontational encounters with smokers, some of whom were very close to me.

It was not until much later that I learnt about the dangerous effects of ETS, and this information confirmed what I had felt and suspected for a long time, and it was that that really convinced me I had made the right choice.

Another factor that played a part was my decision to bring up our child in a absolutely smoke-free environment.

He is almost 17 now, and hates tobacco!

From about 1982 I began to create a constantly higher degree of smokelessness in my office and in my private life, and I felt that this was steadily improving my quality of life.

But external circumstances, for example relocation, meant that I regularly had to start over again from the beginning.

During that time I had to fight many battles with smokers, often about infinitesimal amount of clean air.

I have now a mild form of bronchitis which I believe to be partly the result of my own tobacco use, but also a result of the unwilling exposure to tobacco smoke in subsequent years.

Another factor that made me very much anti-tobacco was the suffering which I saw my own father going through. At age 50 (in 1960!) he quit smoking when it was established that he was suffering from emphysema.

Even though it was not known at the time, or at least not publicly, he apparently had a very strong feeling that smoking was linked to his disease.

So he quit.

But the emphysema continued to develop, despite his quitting smoking.

The last 20 years of his life he was a physical wreck, totally dependent on medicines.

He was so dependant on my mother, that it killed her too prematurely!

The image of a much-loved human being fighting for air is one that will stay with me for ever.

And it was the fault of tobacco, and I know now that they did it to him with full knowledge of the consequences.

I shall never forgive them for that.

1. How did you get involved with  the non-smoker's rights movement?

When new tobacco legislation was passed in the Netherlands in 1990 this was very welcome to me as it meant I could improve my daily battle by appealing to legal rights.

But the law appeared inadequate in many situations, and made the incorrect assumption that smokers would obey collective and general smoking restrictions even though there were no sanctions.

This was later found to be an unjustified assumption.

At the same time I made contact with the small Dutch Non-smokers'
Association CAN (Clean Air Now!).

This gave me the possibility to unite with those of similar mind, to the advantage of all.

I was so enthusiastic about the goals that within a year I was chosen for the post of secretary.

After a while it appeared that there was no qualified volunteer for the post of editor of the association's magazine OPGELUCHT.

So I took up this task as well, but it turned out to be too much of a workload in combination with the other post, so after 6 years as secretary I gave up that post and remained editor whilst still contributing to daily activities within the association.

Since 1991 I have worked on dozens of radio and TV programs and written a constant stream of articles and letters to magazines in the name of the association.

My weapons are above all the pen and word of mouth.

After a relatively quiet year I feel once more able to take part in the administration of the CAN, this time as chairman.

I had rather that someone else had taken up that post, but there was just nobody to be found, especially since the Dutch media, which are still governed by an incomprehensible tolerance of tobacco and consequent indifference to our aims, tend to present us as aggressive "anti-smokers".

So I was chosen to be CAN-chairman just last Saturday (April 17).

2. Congratulations Fons!
Can you tell us about CAN's recent lawsuit against Erasmus University?

We have spent the last 8 years trying to get the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, to respect the law that supposedly protects non-smokers by prohibiting smoking in public places.

It finally appeared that this could not be achieved by negotiation, especially due to the interminable delaying tactics and false promises of the University administration.

So we filed a lawsuit that we just won against this main Dutch university.

The University was forced to put an end to all illegal smoking immediately, and to maintain the little smoking areas which are allowed by exception, according to our Anti-Tobacco Law.

The judge rejected the argument that the University doesn't have the means to enforce the tobacco-law.

This is a big victory and a warning for all the Dutch institutions who ignore this law.

3. What if the University does not comply?
How are they going to enforce the ban? Can they appeal?
Who is bearing your legal costs?

If they do not comply, we can simply file a new lawsuit, in which we demand a lot of money for every day they ignore the obligation.

The law obliges them to maintain and to enforce the law.

Till now they did practically nothing else than sign where smoking is forbidden and not where it is permitted.

But nobody was in charge of enforcement. So it became a complete mess:
the students-smokers simply smoked wherever they chose.

Now that has to end. They must see that officers take notice of the incidents.

If necessary a smoker could be ultimately thrown out of the University.

Technically they could appeal but the decision is such that nobody would advise them to do so. As far as the legal costs are concerned the judge ordered the University to pay for all the costs, including ours.

4. Do you have other "targets"?

All the official buildings and institutions who10 years after the law was passed, don't do enough to enforce it.

This case is a warning for them, so I hope it will help us.

We take action everywhere where normal people, i.e. the non-smokers, can have trouble as a result of others' tobacco use.

For instance we are currently active at the country's main airport, Amsterdam (Schiphol), which has been declared to be smoke-free since 1 April 1999 after a previous unsuccessful smoking policy, but which still has 1,300 ash trays scattered about and allows smoking in all the catering establishments.

We maintain constant contact with the entire Dutch catering industry, which - to summarize - is still a complete disaster area for non-smokers.

We assist people who have had enough of having to suffer continual smoke at their place of work.

And in this country that is more the rule than the exception.

We also maintain a continual barrage of publicity in which we lose no reasonable opportunity to make our views known.

Unfortunately we still have only less than 1500 members.

5. How do you explain the relatively small size of your membership?

In this country the non-smokers are not aware of the threat from ETS.

Asbestos is immediately recognized as life-threatening, but the equally dangerous ETS is tolerated and considered as insignificant.

The media bear a heavy responsibility because they are far too often collaborators with the tobacco industry.

For instance our lawsuit against the University was hardly reported.

Recently, when a well-known politician died at a fairly young age from lung cancer nobody was prepared to express the idea that there was a link between his premature death and his heavy consumption of cigars.

I exerted a strong pressure on the media to make it clear that this man was the victim of the tobacco industry, and therefore did not deserve to be implicitly accused of having brought about his own premature death.

This caused a shock wave throughout the media.

My opinion is that smokers are also victims of a criminal tobacco industry; therefore I am in agreement with the awarding of damages in America to smokers who have contracted tobacco related illnesses.

There is still much work to be done.

It is like rolling a large stone up a hill; but once we reach the top things will go a lot faster.

Nonetheless I predict that there will be a place for non-smokers'
associations until far into the 21st century.

What you feel like adding :

As well as my normal tasks for the CAN, I am also at this moment organizing the 4-day conference of the European Non-smoking Organizations, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the existence of the CAN this year.

This meeting will be held in Rotterdam at Whitsun weekend (21-25 May 1999).

We want to share information and organizational tips.

It is important to promote such international contacts.

Globalinkers are most welcome to attend this low budget conference! If you're interested, don't hesitate to contact me at [email protected].

National non-smokers' associations must also organize themselves at an international level, because nowadays many affairs are decided at above national level.

In Europe for instance, this is at the level of the European Union.

We have to be represented at that level and we know that the tobacco industry and other parties are lobbying and trying to gain influence at that level.

Non-smokers cannot leave it to others to fight the battle to free themselves from domination by a merciless tobacco culture.

A part of this tobacco culture which also threatens us, is not only the behavior of smokers as individuals or as group, but also the mechanisms by which they are motivated: advertising, the culture which allows them to light up whenever they will, the simple fact that tobacco is generally available, and in general the presentation of tobacco as a source of pleasure rather than a heavy and destructive poison which also contaminates non-smokers.

Therefore our association does not only take action for the protection of non-smokers in areas for general use, but also attacks tobacco advertising and in general the far too tolerant culture surrounding tobacco use.

We therefore nominate tobacco the "mother of all drugs".

Thank you Fons for taking the time to be with us today.