The European Commission has laid out a recommendation for toughening the bloc’s stance on where people can smoke, with particular attention on discouraging smoking in outside areas and keeping legislation abreast of new smoking products.
The move comes as part of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, which includes an objective “to help create a ‘Tobacco-Free Generation’ where less than 5% of the population uses tobacco by 2040, compared to around 25% today.” Part of that strategy involves the “denormalisation of tobacco and nicotine use”, but, the Commission says, current measures are not as effective as they could be.
No smoking in outdoor areas
One of the main issues with the existing Council Recommendation (2009/C 296/02) is that it fails to extend anti-smoking protections to outdoor areas, “where children are likely to congregate such as public playgrounds, amusement parks and swimming pools,” the Commission says.
The new recommendation seeks to address those loopholes and also wants to see “outdoor areas connected to healthcare and education premises; public buildings; service establishments; and transport stops and stations” covered by smoking bans.
Will extending no-smoking bans work?
Hotrec, a professional organisation representing 47 national hospitality industry bodies, has called into “question whether expanding its scope and coverage to include outdoor spaces of hospitality venues – such as terraces of restaurants, hotels, and cafés – will effectively achieve this health objective. Instead, it would shift smoking to alternative locations, potentially causing further disruption to local communities.”
Restrictions on new and emerging smoking devices
The Commission has gone further in its recommendation. Smoke-free environment policies should also be applied, it says, to “emerging products”. These include heated tobacco products (HTPs) and electronic cigarettes, which, the European body says, “increasingly reach very young users.”
Citing the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Commission noted the negative effects of exposure to second-hand emissions from those new products, which are often marketed as healthier options or smoking cessation tools but have been linked with “significant respiratory and cardiovascular problems.”
Funding
Health policy is a “Member State competence”, meaning that each European Union state is responsible for implementing their own policy. But the Commission said it would be supporting an exchange of best practices and internal cooperation with direct grants worth €16 million from the EU4Health programme. That input comes in addition to €80 million of Horizon Programme money already allocated to reinforce tobacco and nicotine control as well as addiction prevention. A prevention toolkit is also under development.
