This was an interesting sign I happened upon in downtown Helsinki this summer. The classical "No Smoking" -sign has been extended with a few more icons within the red slashed circle. Besides the iconic smoking cigarette icon, we also have a snus pouch container1 and an e-cigarette device.
Since the other icons aren't quite as universal, we also have the text underneath (in Finnish) explaining the sign, translating roughly to:
Smoking or the use of snus and e-cigarettes is forbidden on school property.2
Tobacco law 73§ and 74§.3
I wonder if the cigarette might go the way of the floppy disk, changing its role from an icon (index?) into a symbol. I sort of doubt it, but it was fun to see a classical sign catching up with modern times!
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Nicotine product you usually use under your top lip. Somewhat similar to American chewing tobacco, except that this is often used in small pouches that stop it from spreading in your mouth. Not as prevalent as smoking, but not uncommon in Finland (see e.g. here or here). Though we note that the supermajority of snus users in Finland are male. We also note that unlike smoking, snus produces next to none passive effects, and one of the few bad side effects are that unpolite people might not properly dispose of the used snus. Thus we feel that signs forbidding snus use (which are exceedingly rare outside e.g. schools where they are targeted at minors) operate at a different context than "no smoking" signs. ↩
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It's a little bit hard to translate, but there is an interesting nuance here on how the forbidden things are listed. Instead of saying "A, B and C are forbidden", we state something like "A, and also (B and C) are forbidden", where A is smoking, and B&C are for the other options. Again I hesitate to overanalyze as I don't know if this is intentional, but to me it gives the feeling that the more modern nicotine-based vices are seen as appendices to the classical smoking. ↩
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The law text in question describes national limits to where smoking (etc) cannot be done. Listing the relevant laws might function both as providing extra authority to the sign, but for people knowing the legal status, might it be a sort of veiled apology? Like, "we don't want to forbid smoking, but we must due to law". Also, the law actually does not concern snus as it produces no particulate. ↩