The Spanish Association of Users of Personal Vaporizers (Anesvap) has called to mobilize against the new preliminary project of tobacco law, currently in public hearing. “They are selling us smoke,” says the entity, which accuses the Ministry of Health of “stigmatizing” vapers and “misrepresenting scientific data” by assimilating electronic devices to fuel tobacco. In his opinion, the result would be “to push thousands of exfusters back to the cigarette” or the black market of liquids and devices. Criticisms arrive after the approval of the text by the Council of Ministers and its publication for allegations.
The legal draft expands the scope of Law 28/2005 to the so -called “related products” (among them, electronic cigarettes, with and without nicotine) and reinforces the protection of minors, because for the first time, their consumption (in addition to the sale) to minors is also prohibited. The text extends smokeless and vape areas (including terraces, swimming pools), veto the advertising and sponsorship of these products, and prohibits the commercialization of disposable devices with a transitional period of 12 months to extend stocks.
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Health argues that the changes respond to the evolution of the market and the need for “healthy spaces”, and emphasizes that electronic are subject to the same advertising restriction frame as tobacco. The draft itself identifies as a novelty the prohibition of sale and supply of single -use electronic cigarettes and updates the sanctioning regime.
In parallel to the preliminary draft, the Ministry processes a modification of Royal Decree 579/2017 that introduces the uniform packaging and contemplates restrictions on flavors in electronic cigarettes (a measure designed to reduce its attraction among young people), in addition to regulating devices without nicotine and new categories such as nicotine sachets. That draft, subject to public hearing, expressly mentions “measures of restriction of flavors” and sets labeling changes.
Increased traditional tobacco consumption
For Muntadas-Prim Ángeles, president of Anesvap, “the new prohibitions on less harmful alternatives are a nonsense.” The association denounces that “matching vaping to combustion tobacco” will foster cigarette return and push many users to manufacture homemade liquids or go to the black market.
“A prohibition does not eliminate one product: it only makes it invisible for the law and more dangerous for those who consume it,” adds spokesman Julio Ruades. The entity insists that the focus should be close to the passage of minors in physical and online sale, with effective age controls and illicit trade surveillance.
The sale of minors of products with nicotine was already prohibited since the transposition of the European directive in 2017, but the novelty of the draft is also to sanction consumption by minors, in addition to extending the free places of smoke and aerosol.
Health bases its reform on the charge of disease attributable to tobacco (more than 50,000 deaths per year in Spain, according to data cited by scientific societies) and in the rise of electronic products among adolescents, since the official document of the Ministry itself states that 54.6% of young people from 14 to 18 years have ever proven these devices and that the prevalence of use in that section went from 14.9% in 2019 to 26.3% in 26.3% 2023.