I'm sure you're wondering to yourself "gee, the smoking ban has been in effect for several months now, how is it going over there?"

Indeed any café you walk into these days, all over the Netherlands, the only thing you smell is food, sweat, or cleaning products. First the first time ever, Amsterdamers can actually see each other in social situations, which makes me wonder what the long term social effects are.

Interestingly there are cafés that are unilaterally rebelling against the new policy and allowing smoking. I've never seen one, but apparently inspectors go café to café checking that no one is smoking. Which doesn't surprise me that much, since we're talking about the same country where there are garbage police to check that you're throwing things out the right way.

Until now the penalty for being caught allowing smoking, as a café owner, has been a stiff warning. But since October the authorities are now handing out fines ranging from 300 to 2,400 euros. According to the Dutch newspaper AD, since October, 272 smoking fines have been handed out. Lets see how many they give in November.