This Tuesday, the Health Ministers of the European Union adopted a recommendation to extend the smoking ban to open spaces such as terraces of bars and restaurants, playgrounds, bus stops and swimming pools; a restriction that they also ask to impose on emerging products such as electronic cigarettes, whether or not they contain nicotine.
The text was approved at a meeting in Brussels with the only abstentions from Germany and Greece, but with an attached declaration from Italy and Romania that was very critical of the process to process this recommendation and that questions the scientific basis to maintain that the risks from exposure to vaping justify extending the same restrictions to these products as traditional tobacco.
In any case, as recalled by the rotating presidency of the EU that Hungary occupies this semester, this is not a new common legislation but rather a a “recommendation that does not imply an obligation” for Member States, whose governments will in practice be able to choose “which measures to apply”.
The new position revises a previous recommendation from 2009 to adapt it to the current reality in which the market offers new tobacco products and aerosols to reinforce anti-smoking strategies and advance the European Union’s objective of achieving a “smoke-free” generation by 2040, it is That is to say, that by that date less than 5% of the European population is a smoker.
The update of the recommendation arises from an initiative of the European Commission last September and which the Member States now support, taking into account, for example, reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) according to which exposure to foreign emissions from heated tobacco products is related to “respiratory and cardiovascular abnormalities significant consequences suffered by passive smokers”.
It also states that according to the WHO, the vapor from electronic cigarettes, “both those that contain nicotine and those that do not, expose people in the environment at quantifiable levels of suspended particles and toxic substances and key pollutants”.
In this context, EU governments are committed to, “taking into account national competences and specificities”, acting to protect “effectively against exposure to smoke and aerosols outside in designated outdoor recreation areas”, especially in areas where minors or vulnerable people are regularly present, which “should include public playgrounds, amusement parks, swimming pools, beaches, zoos and other spaces similar exteriors”.
In the debate prior to the adoption, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, expressed the “full support” of the Government to a text that he considers “clear and ambitious”, while highlighting the inclusion of alternative products to tobacco such as, for example, vaping devices because “every day we have more scientific evidence of their potential risk” of causing cancer, cardiovascular diseases and respiratory problems.
“It is very worrying that young people receive a misleading message about the risk that these products entail for their health,” argued the Spanish minister, who has also stressed the need to protect the most vulnerable “who passively suffer the consequences of this exposure without a choice.”
Other countries, however, have shown their discomfort due to the lack of impact evaluations in the initial proposal of the European Commission although no one has voted against the recommendation. Greece, which has abstained, for example, demands “viable solutions” and “proportionality” in the actions, for which it demands “scientific data” and warns that it will be “difficult” to translate the recommendation to the specificities of each country without having previously done the study of its impact.
The governments of Italy and Romania, for their part, have included a declaration to the recommendation to register their displeasure because they consider that the proposal “would have required longer periods and better modalities to develop the analysis between the member states” and They call the lack of debate “regrettable.”
“We regret that an adequate impact assessment has not been presented for this event, as a basis for the Council’s correct evaluation of the proposed recommendations,” the statement concludes.
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