New comprehensive plan against smoking 2024-2028, which maintains the spirit of the one drawn up for 2021-2025 and which, for unspoken political reasons, was left to rot in a drawer of the Ministry of Health. Now he is recovering and his draft will be studied tomorrow by the Public Health committee of the Interterritorial Council, and everything points to him continuing his way until the meeting between the minister, Mónica García, and the councilors of the branch.
But, unlike in the previous text (which was never debated), which clearly focused on the reform of the tobacco law to expand smoke-free spaces, now there is more toe-to-toe on that point ( less details about which spaces). On the other hand, they are more adamant about the need to comply with the current law, which prohibits smoking in all closed spaces, while open spaces are not allowed on terraces if they are partially covered, in children’s parks and in the surroundings of schools and health areas, among others.
In fact, they repeatedly propose to increase “inspection and follow-up activities for compliance with the legislation in smoke-free spaces, mainly in places of special protection (health, educational and social centers)”. And, of course, on the semi-covered terraces, where you can smoke even if only one wall is open.
Does this mean that there will be no new smoke-free spaces? The draft plan clearly establishes “the legislative expansion of spaces without tobacco smoke and without aerosols of electronic cigarettes and related products in certain outdoor community and social environments, and in certain private spaces, especially those with the presence of minors”. Without saying it, they point to open terraces, outdoor sports centers and vehicles when there is a minor. Also at bus shelters. But the text does not make this clear, partly because PP councilors do not want more smoke-free spaces, at least not with regard to restaurant terraces.
Another of the plan’s objectives, perhaps the most important, is to prevent minors from taking up smoking and, for this, as scientific and medical societies have been claiming for months – especially those gathered in the National Committee for the Prevention of Smoking Smoking (CNPT) – that vaporizers be equated to traditional cigarettes and heated tobacco devices (recently equated to tobacco), because this is the gateway to smoking for children under 10 and 12 years of age. These are electronic cigarettes without tobacco, but which may or may not contain nicotine.
The plan envisages “regulating the sale and consumption of tobacco-related products (with and without nicotine)” as well as “equating by law the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of related products and new products to the existing one for products of the tobacco”. This will prevent them from continuing to be sold in supermarkets or candy stores and will ensure that YouTubers or Instagrammers advertise them or expose themselves to them on social networks, the CNPT points out.
According to the experts, vapers are the tobacco industry’s Trojan horse to attract new smokers and, “far from reducing risks, they multiply them because in more than 60% of cases the dual consumption of electronic cigarettes and combustion tobacco ends up occurring “. “They are not harmless and attract smokers at an increasingly early age. If the average age of first contact with conventional tobacco is 14 years, with vaporizers and electronic cigarettes we are seeing how there are boys and girls who have their first contact with nicotine at the age of 11 or even earlier” , they point out.
The plan also provides for an increase in taxes on tobacco products, with the clear aim of increasing their price. One of the measures analyzed and planned a thousand times, but which never finds the support of the Ministry of Finance. And the fact that the expenditure caused by tobacco (due to the multiple diseases it causes) is three times higher than what is collected, points out the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla.
