Spain considers banning smoking and vaping on ALL beaches
- Spain may soon ban people from smoking and vaping on all its beaches
- Ministers said the crackdown would benefit public health
- Several beaches have already been turned into smoke-free areas
Spain is considering banning smoking on all beaches as it presses ahead with tough new measures.
The Spanish Ministry of Health has confirmed a new crackdown on both smoking and vaping and says people’s health has to be protected.
One of its new priorities is to resurrect the anti-smoking plan which will include extending smoke-free spaces to terraces, beaches and cars in the presence of minors and pregnant women.
‘We must look at the law again because we cannot turn our backs on the only measure that can give the population more years of life and a better quality of life, which is to reduce smoking,’ said Health Minister Mónica García.
The Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking 2021-2025 was finalised a year and a half ago but has not yet seen the light of day.
Several holiday hotspots in Spain have already expanded their no-smoking beaches, with the Balearics now having 28 of them
118 million cigarette butts are left on the streets of Spain’s Balearics Island alone
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The Ministry of Health says it wants to ‘remove it from the drawer’ and expand the ban on tobacco consumption to more areas.
‘The first steps are to get it out of the box,’ said Monica García. ‘We will have to look at each of the cases and each of the assumptions.
‘What we plan to is study what that plan is going to be, if it needs to be expanded, if it needs to be modified, but we do have a firm commitment to those recommendations.’
The Minister of Health also referred to vapers, pointing out that ‘nicotine releasers must be included in this regulation’, similar to the measures around tobacco.
She said ‘vapers will have to have precise regulation’ and ‘that is adapted to all the regulations that exist regarding tobacco.’
The plans are already causing controversy. José Luis Martínez-Almeida, mayor of Madrid, said prohibiting smoking on terraces would be ‘nonsense.’
‘From a health point of view, smoking, of course, is not the most recommended activity, but from there to prohibiting it from being done outdoors seems crazy to me,’ he said.
Various holiday hotspots in Spain have already expanded their no-smoking beaches, with the Balearics now having 28 of them.
However, smoking generally is a huge problem with 118 million cigarette butts dumped each year in the Balearics alone.
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