Spain set for tougher anti-smoking laws

Spain will agree tough new laws today to ban smoking.

It will be prohibited in all enclosed working areas, as well as children’s playgrounds and outside schools and hospitals.

The government bill amends one from 2006 and brings Spain in line with the rest of the European Union, and takes it even further by prohibiting smoking in certain outdoor areas as well.

The current law bans smoking in the workplace but permits it in bars of less than 100 square metres and in restaurants with larger floor spaces that have specially adapted areas.

In practice, smoking has been permitted in almost every bar and restaurant in the country.

Hotels, however, will be allowed to set aside up to 30% of their rooms for smokers.

The restaurant and bar sector say the new measure will lead to 145,000 job losses and a 10% drop in income.

The government hopes to have it in force by January next year.

A parliamentary commission rejected a demand by the bar and restaurant federation to allow them to install specially isolated rooms for smokers within their premises.

“This bill, like the current one, will ruin the sector,” said federation president Jose Maria Rubio.

Salvador Chacon, 34, who owns a small bar in central Madrid feared the worst.

“The prohibition is going to have a big effect,” he said. “It’s as if this was becoming a dictatorship.”

Others looked forward to the change.

“I don’t smoke but I welcome this law,” said 44-year-old Miguel Gonzalez as he sat in a Madrid bar.

“Given the time I have spent in this bar, I think I’m more of a smoker than a real smoker.”

The National Committee for the Prevention of Smoking says up to 1,000 Spanish bar waiters die yearly from lung cancer.