Measures.Illa will modify the Tobacco Law
When at the end of the year the death toll from Covid-19 reaches 50,000 in Spain, the other pandemic already exceeds that figure.
I am referring to those anonymous people, friends, neighbors or patients who have left us this year for having made the mistake of starting to smoke and to whom I resist relegating a number in the statistics of smoking mortality.
Both pandemics with different degrees of social awareness converge in the final stretch of this hated 2020
.
On January 2, 2021, the so-called Anti-Smoking Law will be 10 years old, the one that prohibited smoking in bars.
In a quick balance we will say that he soon closed his mouth to those who predicted the ruin of the hospitality sector.
In addition to its epidemiological achievements, such as the evident decrease in hospital admissions for coronary heart attacks and asthma, we have also enjoyed a 95% improvement in the environmental quality of hotel spaces.
But, if this Law has contributed something to us, it is a culture of respect that has been mainly supported by the people.
That smoker and non-smoker citizenship that is the one that day by day makes sure the norm is fulfilled and educates us in its compliance.
The same citizenship that protested in 2012 against the threat of the involutionary boss of the Eurovegas casino, is the one that enforces smoke-free spaces despite the notorious passivity of the state and regional administration.
In the middle of the decade, the initial good omens of this Law remained in borage water when
After the European Tobacco Directive of 2014, the current government relegated it to oblivion to the point of transposing it a year behind
the legal deadline, without undertaking any reform.
An opportunity that our French and British neighbors did take advantage of.
There, the price of tobacco exceeded 10 euros, more than double what a pack of Marlboro costs in Spain.
France and the United Kingdom are two of the 18 countries in the world that are committed to a neutral tobacco package that is the same for all brands and in a khaki green color, instead of the colors that the industry has us used to here.
You will understand why it is so easy for our minors to access tobacco and alcohol in Spain.
It is fair to
recognize the funding programs for smoking cessation treatments
promoted this year by the Ministry of Health and the autonomous regions.
No other advance in 10 years apart from the Addictions Law of the Basque Country, which in 2016 equated electronic cigarettes and products related to conventional tobacco, which has enabled the Basque population to access bars without vaping as well as stadiums without smoke.
Sales pick up
The current reality is what it is:
tobacco sales rebound in Spain after 10 years of declines
.
A quarter of the Spanish population continues to smoke with even less desire to quit than before, and most worryingly, the industry continues to recruit our minors, who in addition to having the cheapest tobacco in Europe on hand, continue to be exposed to continuous incentives consumption that comes from
Internet
influencers
, from promotions at points of sale and from easy access to the tobacconist and vending machines.
And to top it all, a new door opens for them through joints and cannabis.
Thus, the tobacco industry continues to ensure the young relief of those who die for the cause.
If we add to this the environmental impact of the
more than 66,000,000 cigarette butts that are thrown on the ground every day in Spain
, the future looks bad.
The tobacco law is one of those trains that we see covered in graffiti on the sidings of the stations, waiting for someone to start it.
Before leaving, Minister Illa announces an upcoming hardening.
It is not a question of softness or hardness and it is a question of the Ministry and society knowing the destination and the timetable of that train.
Finland and other countries that promote the ENDGAME strategy have set an expiration date for tobacco for the year 2030. It is no utopia to raise it.
The fallacy is to let the states continue to profit from a product that is incompatible with fundamental rights such as the right to Health, Children or the environment
.
Let's not delay the departure of the convoy, it is now, in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic, the time to put it into operation.
'The Lancet' in a recent editorial sees in the coronavirus the great opportunity to end the Tobacco Industry, precisely to promote the recovery from a crisis for which tobacco is one of its greatest burdens: "... stop your feet to an industry that generates disease and poverty but that continues to appear as the good guy in the movie that gives away masks or makes vaccines. "
Establishing security perimeters of 10 meters for smoking and vaping, or smokeless terraces are in addition to anti-Covid impact measures, the best opportunity to denormalize tobacco at a time when the population understands that
despite all the efforts, no We managed to reduce contagion rates
in an overloaded healthcare system, supported by the healthcare community that is at the physical and psychological limit.
That train will not start without a strong political conviction and a roadmap that gives it free rein and speed.
France has been developing an ambitious economic plan in which tobacco taxes are not only paid by smokers but it is the tobacco industry itself that, through a tax levy, contributes part of its profit to the financing of the "Fund to fight against tobacco ";
pure logic of "who kills pays".
It is unacceptable for the Tobacco Board to boast that its deadly product contributes 9,000 million euros to the State coffers when the damage and direct and indirect costs that they generate to our society double that figure.
It is time for business to get behind human rights.
It is time for the train of the new Tobacco Law to start.
Endgame next season.
Joseba Zabala Galán
, Public Health doctor and coordinator of the XQNS Citizen Initiative for the improvement of the Tobacco Law.
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