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From this Friday (January 6), tobacco companies in Spain will be forced to pay for cleaning up the millions of cigarette butts discarded on the country's streets and beaches every year.

Spain has a vocal and well-funded tobacco control establishment. But the data suggest its traditional approach is failing. 170 national and international experts call for a rethink and make the case that Spain embraces tobacco harm reduction as a real-world public health strategy.

The Royal Decree 579/2017, is the legislation pertaining to the manufacture, advertising and sale of vaping products in Spain. The decree basically translates the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) into Spanish regulations, and has been effective since the 11th of June 2017.

And now, says Euro Weekly, the Spanish Government has set out to put further restrictions on the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes, with the Ministry of Health saying that they aim to reformulate the local anti-smoking legislation and extend it to the use of e-cigarettes, as they cause “harmful short-term effects”.

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, smoking was prohibited in all outdoor spaces if a 1.5-metre safety distance couldn't be maintained and many regions, including the Valencian Community, continue to ban smoking on bar and restaurant terraces. Now, the Ministry of Health preparing an update of the anti-smoking law, it's possible that this measure could be extended to all of Spain, and it appears that it would be little disputed.

Hasta hace no mucho, fumar era un símbolo de poder, erotismo y libertad. Fumaban Ava Gardner y Humphrey Bogart en cada plano. Fumaban los profesores en las aulas y los alumnos en el recreo. Fumaban los padres, y también los abuelos. Nadie se quejaba, y todos anhelaban tener entre sus dedos aquel cartucho de nicotina. El tabaco acabó constituyendo el pilar social clave en el devenir del viejo mundo. Hemos evolucionado mal en muchos aspectos, pero el cambio de paradigma con respecto al tabaco es una de las grandes victorias como sociedad en las últimas décadas. [...]

The Spanish government has taken the decision to control the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes, as there is currently no clear and effective system of control regarding the sale of such nicotine-containing devices.

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Fernando Fernández Bueno, surgical oncologist at the Gómez Ulla Military Hospital and member of the Platform for the Reduction of Harm caused by Tobacco, explained that “vaping is 95% less harmful than traditional tobacco because e-cigarettes do not emit the carcinogens that tobacco does.” He added, “some people still say that vaping is worse than smoking. But there is nothing worse than smoking.”

The government in Spain has been forced by the priority of the coronavirus pandemic to delay moving forward on its fight against tobacco use, but has pushed ahead this week by finalising its ambitious Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking. The proposal contains five main goals and 21 objectives to be achieved in the next four years, among which include banning smoking in cars, introducing generic packaging for brands and equalising the law by imposing restrictions on electronic cigarettes. 

Spain’s e-cigarette industry has launched legal action against the central government, claiming a long-running anti-vaping campaign is against the law on several counts.

The lawsuit, started by the Union of Vaping Promoters and Entrepreneurs (Unión de Promotores y Empresarios del Vapeo, UPEV), claims the Ministry of Health campaign “El tabaco ata y te mata” (“Tobacco ties and kills you”) violates several articles of the Spanish General Law of Advertising and the Law of Publicity and Institutional Communication.

A petition signed by more than 283,000 people calling on Spain to ban smoking at all its beaches has been delivered to the country’s environment minister.

For more than two years the organisation No Fumadores (No Smokers) has been gathering signatures aimed at transforming Spain’s 3,084 miles (4,964km) of coastline into areas free of cigarette smoke and discarded cigarette butts.

The petition, delivered to the minister Teresa Ribera, calls on the government to introduce national legislation on the issue, Raquel Fernández Megina of No Fumadores said in a statement published on Friday. [...]

As the Spanish Ministry of Health is preparing to amend the current Tobacco Act to include some provisions related to vaping products, it has now also launched an anti-vaping campaign that sadly not only ignores all the scientific data in favour of the products as harm reduction tools, but also makes several untrue claims. Last August, Spain’s Ministries of Finance and Health started separately working on amendments for the Regulation of the Tobacco Market and Taxation Regulations, which had not been amended since 1998. [...]