{"id":12779,"date":"2024-10-24T13:29:47","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T13:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/spain-to-ban-disposable-vapes-and-flavours-within-weeks\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T16:09:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T16:09:46","slug":"spain-to-ban-disposable-vapes-and-flavours-within-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/spain-to-ban-disposable-vapes-and-flavours-within-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain to ban disposable vapes and flavours \u201cwithin weeks\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spain plans to ban disposable vapes and flavours \u201cwithin weeks\u201d as part of a major overhaul of its smoking and vaping laws. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The tough new measures are part of an \u2018Anti-Tobacco Plan,\u2019 which the government says aims to limit products that cause a risk to young people\u2019s health and are a \u2018gateway\u2019 to smoking. <\/p>\n

Cigarettes and other tobacco products will also be subject to tighter rules, including higher taxes and mandatory plain packaging. <\/p>\n

The Anti-Tobacco Plan also contains measures to expand the number of places where smoking is banned and put vapers on the same footing as conventional smokers.<\/p>\n

There is also a recommendation that smoking should not be allowed in vehicles<\/a> carrying children or pregnant women. However, the government has acknowledged that similar proposals have been met with huge opposition in the past, and that an all-out ban would be difficult to enforce.<\/p>\n

The Spanish government also recently shared plans to regulate the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, with a draft regulation soon to be published.<\/p>\n

Concern of black market boom<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is concern among anti-smoking campaigners and vape advocates that the latest rules will lead to a surge in unregulated black market products. Earlier this month, illegal vapes worth \u20ac1.55 million on the black market were seized<\/a> by police in Seville – one of the largest seizures of illegal vapes ever seen in Spain. <\/p>\n

In Spain, more than a half a million people vape, according to Knowledge-Action-Change\u2019s recent Global State of Harm Reduction report<\/a>. This equates to around 1.3 percent of the adult population, which is only about a quarter of France\u2019s vaping rate. <\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s high smoking rate<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, Spain\u2019s smoking rate is fairly high, at almost 28 percent of the adult population – more than 11 million people. More than 57,000 people in Spain die from smoking-related disease annually.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, countries such as Sweden and New Zealand, which encourage the use of vapes as an alternative to cigarettes have seen smoking rates plummet, along with tobacco-related health issues. Both countries are now on the verge of being declared \u2018smoke-free\u2019 (where the smoking rate is less than five per cent).<\/p>\n

Vaping advocates argue that the new rules in Spain – particularly the ban on flavours – will cost lives as smokers will find it harder to quit the more dangerous habit.<\/p>\n

Recent research shows that flavoured vaping products are far more effective as a switching tool for smokers than those that are traditional tobacco flavoured. Most adult vapers who have stopped smoking successfully say they prefer non-tobacco flavours.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tough new measures are part of an \u2018Anti-Tobacco Plan,\u2019 which the government says aims to limit products that cause a risk to young people\u2019s health and are a \u2018gateway\u2019 to smoking.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990002,"featured_media":12785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[],"slider":[],"class_list":["post-12779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/990002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12779"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15947,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12779\/revisions\/15947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12779"},{"taxonomy":"slider","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/slider?post=12779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}