Trinidad Jiménez, Spain’s Minister of Health, confirmed in February 2010 that anti-tobacco laws would be toughened by the end of the year, a move that consumer groups have dubbed ‘anti-cancer, not anti-smoker’.
The legislation has been a long time coming and, according to the physician Carles Ariza, secretary of the Comité Nacional para la Prevención de Tabaquismo, it will be widely supported. “The social norms are changing,” he told Metropolitan. “We have data now that shows 70 percent of the general population wants the government to change the law.” A poll published in El País on January 10th, 2010 found that 56 percent of those Spaniards questioned favoured more restrictions on smoking in public places.
Whenever the full ban is finally implemented, it won’t be the first time that Barcelona’s smokers have had to resign themselves to living with less than carte blanche to smoke where they please.
In 2006, smoking was banned in offices, shops, schools, hospitals and cultural centres in Spain. Businesses larger than 100 square metres were given eight months to set up separate smoking areas. This has become a bone of contention for the hospitality industry, which is asking for government compensation to offset any new, stricter law, arguing that many owners spent between €40,000 and €70,000 on modifications. Carles Ariza, who also works for the Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona, said that there were, in fact, few bars and restaurants that made these changes. “In some cases they divided the restaurants, but not exactly as the law dictated.”
Based on evidence collected from countries that have already put similar full smoking bans in place, changing the law will have little effect on the profits of the hospitality industry, according to a report issued by the Comité Nacional para la Prevención de Tabaquismo. “In the majority of cases in Europe, the expected losses didn’t happen,”Ariza pointed out.
Under the 2006 legislation, businesses with a floor space of under 100 square metres could choose for themselves whether to permit smoking on the premises, with the result that most of Barcelona’s bars, restaurants and cafés continued to be smoker-friendly. Tobacco companies considered the 2006 regulations a victory for their side—so much so that the Spanish model was promoted by them to other countries, according to a US study published in October last year by the journal Tobacco Control.
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Spain gets new non-smoking law January 2, 2011
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www.nofumadores.org
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Smoking
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Tradition..
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