The political confrontation has moved to public health affairs. It’s not the first time. It already happened with the pandemic in relation to the use of the mask, for example. But then most of the communities were ruled by the socialists. Now, with eleven autonomies in the hands of the PP, things have changed. And those who previously called for the brakes on the consumption of tobacco and its products, because they considered that it is necessary to stop an addiction that is behind 16 types of cancer, are now asking for more time to debate a comprehensive plan against smoking, saved in a drawer for almost two years.
Not many people are aware that one of the points they most face with each other has to do with turning the terraces into smoke-free spaces, turned by some communities, such as the one in Madrid, into emblems of freedom. Health, for its part, is more in favor of the ban (also Catalonia, Asturias and the Canaries).
In view of this scenario, and with the certainty that the majority of the autonomous regions governed by the PP (led by Madrid) were not prepared to give their support to the anti-smoking plan, even though they all claim to be affected by smoking, Sanitat sought to the Inter-Territorial Council’s by-laws and found that it could go ahead with its anti-tobacco strategy without the need for a vote.
The comprehensive plan can be approved through a collaboration agreement, to which the communities will adhere. At the moment only a third have been added, including Catalonia, one of the communities that has most eagerly defended the need to put a stop to smoking, according to sources from the public health commission. The rest will say so this morning at the meeting of the Interterritorial Council, although they have already made it clear that their answer is closer to no than yes, because they do not agree with the system that Sanitat has sought to move forward with the proposal. Other reasons they allege is that Health is in an excessive hurry to approve this road map whose purpose is to reduce tobacco consumption and, above all, to slow down the incorporation of younger people into the world of tobacco (through, above all, electronic cigarettes). From Sanitat they don’t hide the hurry: each year around 50,000 people die from this addiction and half a thousand passive smokers. More data: every day around 460 young people start smoking, 25% of teenagers aged between 12 and 13 have tried electronic cigarettes and 50% of minors have already started using them.
The third justification most often used is that the plan does not have an economic report, despite the fact that most plans, which establish measures to be followed to achieve a series of objectives, do not have one. Sanitat assures that the monetary and financing issues will be detailed when the corresponding regulations are deployed.
Be that as it may, the reality is that despite all the communities reiterating their commitment against smoking, political clashes seem to make consensus impossible (although 147 of the 157 claims made by the communities have been incorporated into the text ). But even if there is no clear support, the will of the ministry headed by Mónica García is to continue forward, as the Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, explained to the X social network.
In view of this panorama, scientific and medical societies signed a statement in which they expressed their “enormous surprise at the difficulty in approving” the plan, “something incomprehensible considering that the document” was previously agreed upon during months of technical work between Health and communities.
