Is there a more anti-smoking country in Europe than Ireland?
We're about to find out.
The Irish government will shortly deliver its long-awaited tobacco review. This is like a White Paper. It's the start of a process that can take two or three years and often ends with legislation and a raft of new laws.
We have no idea what will be in the review but we suspect it may include proposals to ban smoking in cars (with or without children), prohibit smoking in parks and beaches, introduce plain packaging and so on.
Unfortunately people in Britain tend to ignore developments in Dublin. Well, Ireland matters.
Ten years ago Forest wanted to set up a group in Ireland. We could see what was coming down the line (a ban on smoking in pubs and bars) and we wanted to help organise some opposition.
It's difficult to fight on more than one front and in 2002 our immediate priority was London where Ken Livingstone was threatening to follow New York's example and introduce a unilateral smoking ban.
So we focussed on London and did quite a good job of helping to see off that particular threat.
Ireland however was neglected and we know what happened next. Legislation was passed virtually unopposed, Scotland's first minister Jack McConnell then picked up the baton (using the "success" of the Irish ban as a barometer), and that led to smoking bans in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Forest Eireann was finally set up two years ago and made a promising start in terms of media coverage. Stage two of the campaign will start when the Irish government publishes its tobacco review and it promises to be a long, hard battle.
Health minister James Reilly is described as "vehemently anti-smoking". I understand that he is also one of the least popular ministers in Ireland, which is saying something in a country where voters seem to regard all politicians with contempt.
Micheál Martin, the current leader of Fianna Fáil, the main Opposition party, was the under fire health minister when the smoking ban was introduced in Ireland. Arguably, it saved his career.
The danger is that Reilly may see the war on tobacco as an opportunity to flex his muscles too, although most people laughed when he suggested earlier this year that smoking should be banned on beaches.
There is another scenario and it's this: both the British and Irish governments will postpone further tobacco control measures until the European Commission has published its own Tobacco Products Directive.
We were expecting an announcement very soon but there's been a little local difficulty in Brussels. You may have read about it.
As luck would have it (I'm being ironic, in case you're wondering), the next country to hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union is – Ireland.
So there we have it. Half a million people in Britain expressed opposition to plain packaging in a 'public' consultation but that may count for nothing if unelected bureaucrats and prohibitionist politicians in Dublin and Brussels get their way.