The new Anti-Tobacco Law promoted by the Ministry of Health, led by Mónica García, is creating something to talk about, to such an extent that the debate has gone beyond the continent and has reached the United States. The American media DC Journalbelonging to the group InsideSources, has criticized Spain’s new legislative measures on tobacco and has described the intention to prohibit the consumption of nicotine pouches in outdoor public spaces as “scientifically absurd.”
The article explains that health policies have led to a kind of public harassment that ignores scientific evidence on the mechanisms of transmission of damage. The text reports that the original bans on smoking in closed places, implemented decades ago in North America and Europe, had a solid justification based on the demonstrated harm of secondhand smoke for employees and passers-by, something that does not happen with this new rule.
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Although the protection of third parties against smoke was the legal and ethical pillar that allowed property rights and individual freedoms to be restricted, in this case Martin Cullip, author of the article, explains that the new regulations have abandoned that logic. That is to say, the “stigmatization” of nicotine users is now sought, regardless of whether or not their habits represent a real risk to third parties.
The new tobacco law in Spain lacks a scientific basis
The criticism is based on how the new regulations are evolving in Spain, since the Government intends to legally equate the new forms of consumption with traditional tobacco. In this sense, the analysis indicates that nicotine pouches do not produce smoke or vapor and do not emit any substance into the environment.
For this reason, Cullip defends that there is no evidence or mechanism by which these products can harm those who are nearby. According to this position, equating these devices with combustible tobacco responds more to a moral panic and puritanism than to an evidence-based policy.
The article also explains the controversy over e-cigarettes in detail and establishes a chemical and physical distinction between tobacco smoke and vape aerosol. While conventional cigarette smoke is a product of combustion and releases thousands of toxins and carcinogens, vapor is generated by heating a liquid.
The text cites as a reference Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom, institutions that have estimated that vaping is at least 95% less harmful than smoking and that exhaled emissions have negligible or undetectable levels of toxic chemicals.
The publication of this analysis in DC Journal shows that current of opinion that questions the prohibitionist drift of Western administrations, as is the case of Spain. It should be noted that this independent medium, which distributes content to nearly 300 newspapers in the United States, usually offers analysis of public policies from a perspective critical of excessive state intervention.
The author ends by reporting that the extension of the bans to products that do not generate passive smoke reveals that the real reason for the regulations is no longer public health, but the control of behavior and the imposition of obedience through punishment and stigma.
This vision clashes head-on with the strategy of the Spanish Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. The Spanish health authorities defend that it is necessary to limit these new products not only due to their potential toxicity, but to prevent them from becoming a gateway to smoking for young people and to not renormalize the act of smoking in shared spaces. The tension between the harm reduction proposed by proponents of non-combustion alternatives and the total prevention pursued by regulators continues to mark the legislative agenda on both sides of the Atlantic.