Following the United Kingdom’s new anti-smoking law which prohibits anyone born after 2008 from purchasing tobacco for life, there have been calls for Spain’s Health Ministry to implement a similar ban.
The UK’s newly approved legislation aims to stamp out smoking among younger generations and eventually abolish it for Britain’s entire future population.
It’s a bold move which has been hailed by anti-smoking organisations in Spain as a “historic milestone in Public Health” that will mark “a turning point worldwide”.
The association Nofumadores.org has been calling for a similar measure in Spain since 2020 and has urged Congress to include a ban on the sale of tobacco and nicotine products to those born after 2009.
The Ministry of Health, however, has acknowledged that “this is not the right time” to do the same in Spain due to a “significant legislative lag” in public policy.
“We have a higher prevalence and a significant legislative lag in terms of policies. Now we are trying to position ourselves at the forefront of these policies. These measures cannot be ruled out for the future, but we are not yet at the right point in terms of tobacco policies to reach these levels”, explained the General Director of Public Health, Pedro Gullón.
It’s not just the government that believes Spain isn’t ready for this type of legislation; many experts think the same. Noa Rey, president of the National Committee for Smoking Prevention (CNPT), admitted during an interview with newspaper 20 Minutos that “the situation in our country is very different from that of the United Kingdom where far fewer people smoke” because “very effective” control measures have been in place for years.
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She believes that Spain urgently needs to take other steps first, such as plain packaging for tobacco products, raising the price of products, expanding smoke-free spaces like terraces and equating e-cigarettes with tobacco.
The latter two measures are included in the Spanish Ministry of Health’s draft legislation on the matter.
According to the latest data published by the World Health Organisation and compiled by Statista Key Market, a quarter of the population of Spain currently smoke. In the UK, according to the latest government figures, only around 10.4 of the population smoke, considerably less than in Spain.
This makes it a lot more difficult to ban smoking for an entire generation, simply because so many more people smoke and younger people are exposed to it more.
As mentioned above, Spain hasn’t even banned smoking on terraces and some other public spaces yet, so there are several steps that need to be taken before something like the UK’s new legislation can be passed.
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This is not the only issue though, there are legal problems with getting a similar law passed in Spain. Sara Bandrés, Professor of Legal Medicine at the Complutense University of Madrid, told newspaper 20 Minutos that the text approved by the British Parliament would be “difficult” to apply in Spain because the system is different to the Spanish one.
For one, it poses a constitutional challenge because it would imply a difference between citizens and inequality before the law, since it’s only applicable to those born after 2008.
“Our legal system increasingly advocates for greater autonomy and individual freedom in decision-making. In the health sector, we see this with issues like abortion and euthanasia,” she explained.
Gullón, however, has not ruled out applying a similar measure here in the future, when smoking rates in Spain decrease.
