Spain Sets New Limits on Its Crush of Smokers (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Spain Sets New Limits on Its Crush of Smokers

by 
SPAIN;BANS
Source: New York Times, Sunday, 8/8/99
MADRID, Spain  --  Columbus 
brought back tobacco from the New 
World 500 years ago, and Spain has 
been enamored of smoking ever 
since. Recently the Government  has  
stepped up its effort to change that 
situation, and the latest decree bans 
smoking on all commercial flights 
and intercity buses.

  But ever since King Philip III ordered a temporary halt to tobacco 
growing in the Spanish colonies in 
1606, Spaniards have found a way to 
get around the rules regarding tobacco.

 Smoke-free zones in offices, banks 
and restaurants are frequently ignored by Spaniards, many of whom 
prefer the pungent dark tobacco cigarettes. Smoking in elevators, 
against the law, is not uncommon 
and there is even smoking in prohibited zones in hospitals.

 "The application of the legislation 
has to have a certain tolerance," said 
Juan José  Francisco Polledo, Director General of Public Health. "Spaniards are very strong willed and it's 
not good to provoke them."

 The Government, he said, should 
not get too far ahead of society when 
legislating behavior, but he thinks 
the restrictions are starting to pay 
off. The rate has declined slightly in 
the past decade, to 35.7 percent of 
those 16 and over, still among the 
highest in Western Europe.

 Yet some key groups are kicking 
the habit, like Spanish doctors. Nearly 50 percent of them smoked in the 
late 1980's; now the percentage has 
dipped below the national average.

 Spain did not ban cigarette ads on 
television and require health warnings on cigarette packs until 1988, 
about two decades after similar 
measures in the United States. But 
authorities see a change in attitudes 
here even since 1995, when Pedro 
Pérez -- then chairman of Spain's 
largest tobacco company, Tabacalera -- provoked an uproar by claiming that smoking in moderation had 
health benefits. 

 "We have the information that 
smoking is harmful," said María Ángeles Planchuelo, of the Spanish Association Against Cancer. "The 
awareness to quit smoking is coming 
little by little. Parents who smoke 
are now trying to stop their kids 
from smoking. A few years ago, they 
didn't mind."

 The bus companies and airlines 
expect few problems in enforcing the 
new bans, which are to begin this 
autumn. Since 1988, intercity buses 
have been required to provide separate seating for smokers and nonsmokers, and since 1992, smoking 
has been prohibited on domestic 
flights of less than 90 minutes, which 
is most of the traffic.

 But reducing the smoke in offices 
and public buildings seems a long 
way off.

 "If a business caters to the public, 
it fears losing clients if it insists that 
they not smoke on the premises," 
Ms. Planchuelo said.

 The contradictions are apparent at 
a downtown branch on Alcalá Street 
of the Caja Madrid savings bank. 
There is one prominent no-smoking 
sign and six ashtrays.

 "I've always smoked, and no one 
here tells me not to," said Nuria 
Hernández, 28, who was doing some 
banking while puffing on a Fortuna 
cigarette. "It's full of ashtrays."

 A bank employee said that half of 
the branch's staff smokes on the job.

 A few blocks away at Madrid's 
ornate main post office, there are 20 
no-smoking signs on the main floor, 
and 20 ashtray receptacles, many of 
them right beneath the signs that 
depict a burning cigarette crossed 
out by a bright red line.

   Some 46,000 Spaniards die annually from smoking-related cancer, considered the leading preventable 
cause of death in Spain.