Speaking Of Smoke-Free Lebanon

After the previous post about smoking free Beirut, a friend (who, like me is from the north) asked me why the list is exclusive to greater Beirut. Then it dawned on me: There’s not a single place in the north of Lebanon that I can think of which is smoking free. I could almost swear that there’s not one place in all of Tripoli (a city with 500,000 dwellers) that has a smoking-free policy.

The sad thing is that there’s not even a business opportunity presented by that. You’d think that being the only place that is smoking-free would give you a good niche business. But one coffee shop that I know tried a “smoke free day” policy, only to be ridiculed and dismissed by its regular patrons to the point that they stopped that policy altogether.

Even almighty Starbucks couldn’t make it in Tripoli, and I’m sure that the no-smoking policy is part of why they couldn’t survive..