Hundreds of Spanish vapers and small business owners held a demonstration outside the Ministry of Health on Friday to protest against the Spanish Government’s intended legislation to ban flavours in vaping products.
The protest comes as the government considers whether to move forward with a Royal decree banning flavours in vapes, which was the subject of a public consultation last month.
Clearing the Air has covered the proposed ban extensively: our summary of the state of play and next steps is here (and here in Spanish).
The demonstration - which was jointly arranged by both UPEV (small businesses) and ANESVAP (consumers) - was held to mark World No Tobacco Day, and a day after World Vape Day.
Ángeles Muntadas-Prim, President of ANESVAP, summarised what the protests were all about:
"Any attempt to ban something that has saved lives is unacceptable; and this is why we’re protesting”.
Muntadas-Prim was scathing about the Government’s plans: the Sanchez administration has abandoned plans to further restrict combustible cigarettes while doubling down on targeting safer nicotine products:
“It is scandalous to drop plain packaging and taxes on cigarettes from the government’s plan for smoking and focus exclusively on banning products that have saved the lives of over 700.000 former smokers in Spain”, she continued.
“We are the target of very serious accusations and lack of respect by senior officials of the Ministry, going so far as to label us as 'subsidiaries' of the tobacco industry” explained Arturo Ribes, President of UPEV, the trade association that represents small vaping businesses in Spain.
“The Ministry of Health wants to sink us by carrying out “its anti-vaping plan”, to put an end to our sector, our jobs and our way of life. It is an unacceptable situation” he continued.
UPEV warns that regulatory equalization with cigarettes could cause the loss of more than 1,000 jobs and reduce the turnover of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) in the sector by 65%.
