MADRID, July 21 (Reuters) – Spain will ban smoking on outdoor bar and restaurant terraces while extending smoke-free areas and regulating vaping products in the same way as conventional cigarettes, Health Minister Monica Garcia said on Tuesday.
European countries such as Britain and France are increasingly tightening tobacco and vaping rules, framing smoking as both a public-health threat and a drain on state health budgets and productivity.
The draft bill still needs to be approved in a fragmented parliament. The main opposition People’s Party has made its support conditional on the creation of designated smoking areas and guarantees that the hospitality sector will not be harmed.
Garcia said the plan sought to put Spain back at the forefront of tobacco control after earlier reforms banned smoking in enclosed workplaces in 2005 and inside bars and restaurants in 2010.
“The times have changed, new products have appeared and there are new public health needs,” Garcia told reporters.
Tobacco killed around 140 people a day, or 50,000 per year, in Spain, and 30% of cancers were linked to smoking as a risk factor, she said.
BROADER RESTRICTIONS
Smoking on outdoor terraces was temporarily restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the curbs were later lifted.
Spain’s main hospitality-sector lobby said in a statement it disagreed with the measure, which “would have very limited effectiveness, as it could drive smokers indoors to places such as private homes, thereby increasing exposure to second-hand smoke”.
The new rules would also prohibit smoking within 15 metres (49 feet) of entrances to public buildings, playgrounds, and health and educational centres, as well as inside work vehicles, sports facilities, universities, public swimming pools and venues hosting public events.
For the first time, e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, herbal inhalation products, hookahs and heated tobacco devices would come under the same restrictions as cigarettes, regardless of whether they contain nicotine.
(Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Charlie Devereux and Andrei Khalip)
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