“People need an example to see what happens when you smoke and that it could happen to them, too,” he said.

Mr. 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 about 8.8 million.

“We want to show the politicians responsible that the people are in favor of a ban on smoking,” Mr. Szekeres said.

The conflicting public currents around the smoking ban have intensified scrutiny of the Freedom Party, which was founded partly 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.