How widespread is defying the law and smoking in cafes in The Netherlands.......?

You're right - it's a bit confusing. Officially there still is a smoking ban, but culturally the Dutch don't like to be told what not to do. We've always been a tolerant, relaxed country and the government is interfering more and more. So what you see at the moment is that cafe's are making their own policy. A few months ago two small cafe's won a law suit against the smoking ban and more are following. I live in Haarlem which is about 15 mins away from Amsterdam and we have several cafe's where you can smoke (if the owner smokes and has no people working for them, then you can run a smoking cafe. In festival in tents it's officially not legal, but people smoke anyway.

Hi there, well you already got some good answers and just to add something, what bar/cafe owners have told me is that they were quite empty, i mean is not that when the ban came, massively all non smokers decided to go to a bar... so well when this ban came it was summertime, then it was ok, because everybody wanted to seat outside and enjoy the weather but when the weather started to change and it was raining, cold and/or snowing, then certainly very few wanted to be outside smoking if the place didn't have a smoking area...

So actually lots of people stopped going and well bad for the business, then several bars/cafes just put the ashtrays back...

DesmoDutchy's answer sums it up perfectly from my experience. In Amsterdam there tends to be more observation of the "rules" but as you step outside of the direct centre to cafe's which serve locals then the rules slip - that's my take of it as well.

The place where I live, in the centre then most of the cafe's (and these are mainly the larger ones which have staff working there and are busy-ish) observe the ban or have sectioned off, usually the nicer areas by the window ironically in my experience (as a non-smoker)! for smokers.

However in the north of the city then the cafe's there for example don't observe the rules at all - but indeed these are one-man shops (or two partners running it together) and usually they are sitting at the corner of the bar smoking themselves anyway and chatting to locals, and then will get up to serve people when they want drinks.

Well, where I live people act like there is no ban of smoking from cafes and bars... some bars in Amsterdam were smoking-free, but where I live everybody ignores it.

Oh no, really? One of the things that made me look forward to visiting the Netherlands again was the fact that smoking in pubs was officially banned. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke, it's disgusting.