Now Health Minister stubs out - 05.02.2010

TRINIDAD JIMÉNEZ, The Spanish Minister for Health, has backtracked on the Government’s plan for a ban on smoking in cafes, restaurants, bars and public places.

Yet smokers in England, already hit hard by smoking laws, are facing a further crackdown outdoors.
In Spain, the total ban was mooted by the Government late last year, but Jimenez has now rejected the suggestion, made by some in the main opposition party, Partido Popular (People’s Party), that smoking should be banned completely in Spain.

Jiminez said of tobacco: “It is a product which is perfectly assimilated by society,” and claimed that banning it was not the answer.
She also said it was her job to “inform of the consequences of tobacco use”, and added that 55,000 deaths were caused by smoking in Spain each year – and 1,500-3,000 more indirectly.

Jiminez does plan to ban smoking in all closed premises later this year, but denies  that any bars or restaurants will be forced to close by the new law, despite fears being expressed forcefully by owners.
She pointed out that “no single establishment had closed” in other countries where similar legislation had been introduced.

Her latest comments were delivered a week after the Smokers Association in Spain said they paid 9.5 billion euros to the State in taxes last year, and called the Government  “hypocritical”.
Meanwhile, in England, cigarette addicts could soon be banned from smoking in entrances to workplaces, bus shelters and even in pub beer gardens.
 
Government Health Secretary Andy Burnham will review the law in July to see whether it should be strengthened to include areas where smokers have gathered since the 2007 ban.
A complete ban on cigarette vending machines and plain cigarettes packets could also be introduced.
Burnham wants to halve the number of smokers in England, from one-fifth of the population to a tenth, by 2020. That would require around four million of England’s estimated eight million smokers to quit.
However, Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said: “More legislation will further erode our ability to choose how we wish to live our lives.”
The number of smokers has fallen by 25% in the past decade, but an estimated 200,000 young people start smoking every year.
More than 80,000 deaths and 1.4 million hospital admissions in 2007 were attributed to smoking, and the Department of Health said the habit cost the NHS £2.7 billion a year – without saying how much revenue Gordon Brown’s Government collected from the sale of cigarettes.
Burnham added: “Most smokers start before they are 18, so we have to discourage children and young people from ever starting.
“Now we’ve banned advertising and will soon see an end to attractive displays in shops, the only remaining method of advertising tobacco is the packaging.
“So we will carefully consider whether there is evidence for making tobacco companies use plain packets. We will always help people to quit, and smokers should never stop trying..
“One day, in the not-too-distant future, we’ll look back and find it hard to remember why anyone ever smoked in the first place.”
But Forest’s Mr Clark said the government had already introduced “some of the most draconian anti-smoking laws in the world”, adding: “In an allegedly free society, this is nothing to be proud of.
“The current smoking ban, which has had a devastating impact on community pubs and clubs, is out of all proportion to the harm allegedly caused by second-hand smoke. Further restrictions will only accelerate that trend.”
He added: “The Health Secretary says he wants to crack down on cheap, illicit cigarettes – but at the same time, the government says it will consider increases in tobacco duty.
”Yet one of the reasons Britain has such a problem with illicit cigarettes is because this government has increased tobacco taxation to record levels.
“That has encouraged criminal gangs and individuals to smuggle millions of cheap cigarettes into the country.”