The decision of the Valencian Government to allow the hotel industry to decide if it allows smoking on the terraces is “a clear setback” in terms of public health and “an error” in the final objective of normalizing tobacco consumption, according to the doctor of Medicine and coordinator of the tobacco addiction group of the Valencian Society of Family Medicine, Joan Antoni Ribera Osca.
It is the Consell, as guarantor of the well-being of all citizens, smokers and non-smokers, the one that has the responsibility of adopting measures to protect the health of all citizens, and for this reason “there are no more arguments” such as that this regulation was going to produce a decrease in the occupation and income of the hoteliers, since it has already been seen that it does not, affirms the expert.
The doctor points out that the main victim of the smoking problem is the smoker because it is smokers who are more likely to suffer from more than 20 types of cancer directly related to tobacco use, as well as cardiovascular diseases, such as myocardial infarction and lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
According to Ribera Osca, there is a key question as to why to continue with the terraces as smoke-free spaces and he refers to the key problem of smoking.
“Many wonder how tobacco that contains an addictive drug, nicotine, and that we know for sure is going to cause cancer, is legal to be bought and consumed on the street. The answer to this question is the socialization of the consumption of tobacco, the normalization of its consumption”, he explains.
Smokers are aware of the damage – “ask a smoker if they want their child to smoke, the vast majority of them will say no,” he points out – but “we need rules that protect us and that allow everyone to coexist”, so that in a way that, as has already happened with the laws of sanitary measures against smoking in recent years, at first they seemed restrictive and over the years they have been accepted and recognized by smokers themselves as good for everyone.
The purpose of the ban on smoking on the terraces of bars and restaurants was not only to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 through the aerosols produced when smoking, but also to “be another incentive” to motivate smokers to consider an attempt to quit smoking and seek help from their healthcare professionals.
When the current trend is to expand smoke-free spaces, the measure taken by the Consell “represents a clear reversal of a rule already accepted by the majority of the population, aimed at normalizing tobacco consumption”, according to the doctor.
For all these arguments, the Doctor of Medicine believes that the Valencian Government should rethink the decision to allow the hotel industry to decide whether or not to smoke on its terraces, a modification of the regional regulations that “does not help” to vary this progression.
“The socialization of the consumption of an addictive drug, whose consumption is seen as something normal and accepted by the population, by the authorities”, can lead adolescents to “think that it should not be something harmful”, he exposes.
The ban on smoking on terraces does not harm hoteliers, but instead encourages smokers to consider trying to quit, it is an example for young people to question whether it is worth starting to smoke and it protects the rest of the population tobacco smoke, says the coordinator of the group to address smoking of the Valencian Society of Family Medicine.
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