Three winters ago, during a highly public fight against lung cancer, Kurt Kuch, a smoker and prominent journalist in Austria, threw his popularity behind a “Don't Smoke” campaign, hoping to spare others his fate.
After his death, at 42, the lobby succeeded, and the Austrian government agreed to ban smoking in bars and restaurants starting this May.
That was until the recent electoral success of the far-right Freedom Party, whose leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, himself an avid smoker, wants to give Austrians the choice to continue to puff away with a coffee or a meal.
As soon as his party entered a coalition government last year, Mr. Strache, the vice chancellor and sports minister, promised to step back from a total ban, saying he was acting “in the spirit of entrepreneurial freedom.”
The decision has stunned almost everyone involved － doctors, restaurant and cafe owners, and smokers themselves. Even the health minister, who is from Mr.Strache’s party, expressed concern. But it also fits neatly with the Freedom Party’s antiestablishment and quasi-libertarian tilt. “Freedom of choice” is the flip side of a far-right agenda that otherwise seems inclined to dictate to citizens, especially those from minorities, everything from whether they can wear head coverings to whom they should marry.
The push to upend the smoking ban has stirred more than the usual consternation. Although the European Union does not impose regulations on smoke-free environments, it has made a set of recommendations that has led many members to introduce strict bans on smoking in public places in recent years.
Austria has one of the highest smoking rates among adults in the European Union, and was one of only two member states where the number of adults who smoked regularly did not decrease from 2000 to 2015, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Dr. Thomas Szekeres, the president of the Vienna Medical Association, appeared baffled during an interview in his office. Banning indoor smoking, he said, was not an attempt to single out smokers but a move against “smoking and harming the health of people.”
“People need an example to see what happens when you smoke and that it could happen to them, too,” he said.
Dr Szekeres has been one of the high-profile backers of the “Don't Smoke” campaign and has promoted a petition asking the government to think again. It gathered more than 500,000 signatures in the month that followed, in a country of 8.8 million.
The conflicting public currents around the smoking ban have intensified scrutiny of the Freedom Party, which was founded party by former Nazis after World War II, and what it might do now that it has entered government.
Last December, when Mr. Strache’s party received key portfolios in Austria’s new government, an article in the German weekly Die Zeit commented: “They don't want to bite, just to smoke,” referring to the proverb that barking dogs don't bite.
The motto Mr. Strache has repeated since he floated the idea of overturning the ban during last year’s election campaign is “freedom of choice instead of forceful state regulation.” Responsible citizens, he has said, must be able to make these choices themselves.
“It's a policy which in a certain way is not suspicious of being traditionally right-wing,” said Anton Pelinka, a professor of political science at the Central European University in Budapest. “It's a fight against the new enemy, which is called political correctness.”
A bill that is scheduled to go before Parliamant this week is based on the “Berlin model”, which prohibits smoking in most public places but allows it in smaller establishments and in designated areas. It would also increase the minimum age for smoking to 18 from 16.
Unlike in other capitals of Western Europe, in Vienna smoking remains widespread. The sight of smoking rooms in bars and restaurants is common, and cigarettes are easily purchased from vending machines in the streets.
Last December, Mr. Strache appeared at a gathering of restaurant owners in a smoke-filled wine bar near Austria’s Parliament. The rally, hosted by the bar’s owner, Heinz Pollischansky, carried the message that restaurant and bar owners opposed to the ban.
But Vienna’s gastronomy scene is split over the question. The famous coffee houses on city’s tourist trail have already banned smoking, in anticipation of this year’s deadline.
Others, like Cafe Hummel, a family business, have invested thousands of euros in separating smoking and non-smoking areas － and paid fines after complaints from nonsmoking guests for failing to contain the smoke.
Christine Hummel, the manager, is the third generation in her family at the helm of this classic Viennese establishment. “We’ve been here since 1935 it was smoking,” said Ms. Hummel, who is not a regular smoker but enjoys a cigarette with a glass of wine.
Last year, Ms. Hummel had enough of the complaints and fines and declared her cafe fully nonsmoking. She said she immediately lost many regulars, about 5 percent of the annual clientele, and others cut back on orders. But decision allowed her to turn to a new clientele.
“Times change,” she said. “We have to look toward the future.”
A sign of those changing times is Cafe Furth, a small venue that shares its central space with two offices and its own coffee roasting operation.
The owner, Helmut Haller, 30, was on his day off, trying out a new coffee machine and a concoction of iced espresso with blood-orange lemonade. A far cry from the classical coffeehouse proprietor, Mr. Haller said he followed trends in the United States, Australia and Britain and never allowed smoking.
“Global coffee culture is a nonsmoking culture,” he said.
Still, he said he placed his business in the Viennese cafe tradition, which provide a meeting point for great figures of fine arts, literature and philosophy.
“In Austria we’re slower with change,” he said of his country’s position between Germany and the Balkans. He said that some residents and visitors had their minds set on a certain idea of Vienna, described with the German word “Gemutlichkeit,” which translates as a broad feeling of comfort or coziness.
But even many smokers who enjoy a chance to light up see in the ban an opportunity to set themselves free.? One was Philippe Mayer, a 41-year-old musician who had settled into the dimly lit smoking room of Cafe Europa, in central Vienna, after dropping off his daughter at kindergarten.
“It's like a reward for waking up early,” Mr. Mayer said. But even as he enjoyed his cigarette, he, like his country, had mixed feelings about it.
“Smoking gives me a kind of feeling like slavery,” he said. “It would be helpful if it were banned.”
