Spain? Smoking and Fuming
More Spaniards are smoking now than before the anti-smoking legislation
The percentage of smokers is practically unchanged since 2007
Feb 9, 2012
The new anti-smoking legislation which banned smoking in closed public spaces a year ago, has not had the expected effect on the number of smokers.
The Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR), has presented a report today, the first since the new regulations were introduced in December 2010. It shows that currently 17.65% of the Spanish population smokes, 0.5% more than their last report in 2007.
The numbers are based on a survey of 3,300 people, and notes an increase in the number of smokers aged 13-16.
The positive part of the legislation is that it has ensured that there is less contaminated air in public places with the number to complain about smoke down from 38% to 21%.
One in three Spanish smokers, who on average smoke 12 cigarettes a day, say they have tried to give it up when the law was introduced, but only 6% had any success.
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The Smoking-Ban in Andalucia – Spain
June 10, 2011
By Peter Thurgood for The Smoker’s Club
Some weeks ago I reported on my recent trip to Paris, and how the smoking ban was affecting smokers there. Since then I have had to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Government legislation, along with my fellow smokers in this country, but to be fair, the weather here has been so mild of late, that it has been a pleasure, rather than a pain, to be forced outside to enjoy a smoke. Even so, I still couldn’t wait to get back to my spiritual home in Spain, in the hope of experiencing even better weather than we have been experiencing here, and of course to see how the recently introduced smoking ban is affecting our freedom there.
Andalucians on the whole, are a strong race of people who don’t take easily to bans and restrictions of any kind. If a sign says ‘No Perro’ (no dogs), then you can guarantee you will find at least half a dozen of our fury friends scampering around this area, leaving neat little piles, resembling melted sausages, while their owners look happily on as they stand and chat to their friends. This same mentality also applies to car parking, where drivers park completely across zebra crossings and street corners, if normal parking is unavailable.
How then, I wondered, would they take to the recently introduced smoking-ban? They won’t accept it piecemeal, as we have done, not the strong, rebellious Spaniards surely??
Malaga Airport has always been somewhat anti-smoking, so I accepted that, but when I got into my hire car and found two separate signs, one on the window and one on the ash-tray, of all places, stating ‘NO SMOKING’ I immediately peeled off the ‘NO’ leaving just the ‘SMOKING’ bit. That will at least confuse the next person to get that car won’t it?
My first port of call was, as always, a fishing port called Torre del Mar, where I always stop off for lunch at El Yate, which is my favourite restaurant along that coast, selling every type of fish and shell fish imaginable, and also where Raffa, the owner, smokes non stop, as well as the bar staff. El Yate boasts a very large outside seating area, which as usual, was packed to capacity; our table was reserved there, as we had booked it by phone when we picked up our car earlier. Naturally, almost everyone in our area was smoking, it is outside anyway, so no change there then, but when I glanced inside, which is an enormous bar area, with just a few stools for seating, and was packed to capacity, absolutely no one was smoking, not even Raffa, who came to the door to smoke his cigarette. What was happening here I wondered, especially with Raffa, he who displays photos on his wall of his wild boar hunting exploits in the mountains, and drives an enormous Jeep, nearly as big as a London bus? He is a real Andalucian, a man in every aspect; maybe he knows that the police will be paying him a visit, I thought, but I am afraid to say that this wasn’t the case, for I visited El Yate on quite a few occasions while we were there, and this, I am afraid to say, was the situation every time.
Further down the coast, in Almunecar, which is in the province of Granada, and where I have never seen a policeman patrolling the streets, apart from those in cars, the situation seemed the same, but as the majority of bars and restaurants have outside areas, it didn’t seem to matter to most people. There is however one little bar called Los Pajaritos, in a very narrow and sloping backstreet. Definitely no room for an outside area there; just the owner behind the bar and his wife and daughter in the kitchen. The place is packed with locals, mostly standing and drinking beer from bottles, as he never offers you a glass, toilets are behind two tin doors, which lead directly into the smallest areas imaginable, and the noise from chatting and laughing plus the constant din of the corner TV is unbelievable. He won’t stand for this silly no smoking nonsense I told myself, not old Pararitos Joe. The first thing that caught my eye as we walked in was the old glass ashtrays placed all along the bar. Hooray I thought, at last, I knew Los Pajaritos wouldn’t let us down – but I am afraid to say it did; the ash trays were now being used for discarded prawn heads, and other pieces of tapas.
Doing the tapas trail is the recognised way of drinking and eating in Spain, each drink gets you a free tapas, and you get to meet many different people and eat all sorts of food, so from Los Pajaritos, we made our way to several other bars, all of which are outside, so once again, no problems there. It was while standing outside La Gala Bar that I noticed a new bar just across the street with a huge crown outside. A new bar to me is like the proverbial red flag to a bull, and so within minutes we were over there, and pushing our way onto a rail that provided seating for us. Now this is where it gets interesting, for as I looked inside through the open window, sure enough there was a woman and a man, standing there smoking. They were close to the window, where the woman kept flicking her ash outside – but legally they were inside, and the owner didn’t give a hoot!
I was so impressed with the woman’s attitude that I tried to take a photo of her. I told her what I wanted it for, and I explained all about Forest in the UK, but instead of her staying in there and carrying on, she decided to come outside and join us. She was from northern Spain, which is known as the most politically correct part of Spain, where they are mostly left-wing, do not like smoking and have banned bullfighting; in other words, bloody boring! My wife and I went back to that bar on a number of different occasions after that, but didn’t unfortunately see the woman again, so I never got my photo of her, committing her ‘dreadful crime.’
Another town, which I quite like is Nerja, which is a lot more touristy than the other towns we visit, but does have a number of good tapas bars. This was a must, as you do get quite a lot of English people there, many of whom have been doing their hand waving dance since way before the ban, so I considered Nerja a must, on my journey of smoking discovery.
In the past, Nerja was known for its many fine restaurants, and there are still a large number of very good restaurants there, but over the past few years, habits have gradually changed, and more and more people are doing the tapas trail, and eating for free. As this has happened, so more and more tapas bars have opened up – all with outside seating areas. On this visit, even more had opened, especially at the western end of the town, which was absolutely fabulous for me, trying all these new tapas bars, and with no problems whatsoever regarding smoking.
There is however, one bar, called Posada Iberico, in Nerja where I have been going for many years, and know the owner, Paco, very well. I used to love ending our evenings in Paco’s, drinking Torres Diez Brandy, which he introduced me to, and smoking a good cigar, so off we went to Paco’s to suss out the situation there, bearing in mind that like Los Pajaritos in Almunecar, Paco’s is also situated in a narrow alley.
To my great disappointment, Paco had also succumbed to the ban, even though, once again, he is also a strong smoker. The first night we tried there, it was closed, although it was barely 11 pm, the second night, we tried it earlier, and found just a few people in there. I joined Paco out in the alley, where we both smoked cigarettes and spoke of the injustice of the ban, which has all but killed his business. The only gesture towards being smoker friendly was an ashtray placed on the seat of a motorbike parked outside. After a few visits, over the next few nights, mostly reserved to no more than two drinks each time, I think I managed to talk Paco into opening a window up, and having a shelf built outside, as a sort of mini-bar there. He said he intends doing this within the next week or so – we will see!
In the meantime, if I wanted to smoke a cigar, which normally takes an hour or so, and enjoy a brandy or two while doing so, we had to make our way back to one of the newer bars that have been purpose built with outside areas to accommodate smokers.
In a strange way, the smoking-ban has helped smokers in Spain, well at least in Andalucia, as more bars have been opened, but what worries me, is the small bars like Paco’s; will they end up like our British pubs, closed and eventually turned into shops or flats, or maybe even left empty and deserted?
My verdict then for smokers visiting this part of the country, is that there isn’t a major problem, but that is due mainly to the fine weather there for nearly all the year, not to their Government listening or trying to be fair, for they have a left wing Government, that are vary familiar in their outlook to our old Brown administration – and we all know where that led us to don’t we!
Catherine Deneuve flouts smoking ban
Spain
23 March 2011
FRENCH actress Catherine Deneuve, 67, was in Madrid this week to promote a new comedy ‘Potiche’, in which she stars with Gerard Depardieu. During a press conference held at a hotel the ‘Belle de Jour’ star was told to put out a cigarette she refused saying she would pay the fine. “I think it is all very excessive,” she told reporters.
Spain
23 March 2011
FRENCH actress Catherine Deneuve, 67, was in Madrid this week to promote a new comedy ‘Potiche’, in which she stars with Gerard Depardieu. During a press conference held at a hotel the ‘Belle de Jour’ star was told to put out a cigarette she refused saying she would pay the fine. “I think it is all very excessive,” she told reporters.
Thank You for Smoking: Spanish Bars Flout the Ban
January 11, 2011
By LISA ABEND / MADRID
Fernando Tejedor never considered himself a rebel. For the past several years, he has quietly run the Bar Restaurante Spirit in Castell?n, and never had the slightest interest in politics. But just days after Spain’s new antismoking law went into effect, on Jan. 1, Tejedor, 43, has been catapulted to the head of a burgeoning movement. Pasting signs in his restaurant window, he has declared war: Smoking permitted.
On New Year’s Day, Spain finally relinquished its status as one of Europe’s last refuges for the smoker. A 2006 law had banned smoking in the workplace and required the creation of non-smoking sections in larger restaurants and bars, but because of ample loopholes and lax enforcement, it was largely ineffective. In fact, in the first three years of the law’s existence, smoking among Spaniards actually increased 6.7%. But this new law means business. Not only does it ban smoking in all enclosed public spaces and even some open-air ones, it also prescribes fines for infractions, from $40 for individuals to as much as $13,000 for establishments that flout the law. Gone forever, it would seem, are those dark Spanish bars made hazy by the dense plumes emerging from countless cigarettes. (See how the French are ignoring their smoking ban.)
Just not in Castell?n. Or San Pedro de Alc?ntara. Or Valencia. Ever since the law went into effect, a small but growing number of bars and restaurants have joined in open rebellion against it, blatantly encouraging smoking and collecting signatures to have the law appealed. Jos? Eugenio Arias, owner of the Asadaor de Guadalmina, was the first to defy the prohibition. On Jan. 3, he hung posters around his restaurant in San Pedro de Alc?ntara, on Spain’s southern coast, saying that smoking is allowed, and told Spanish television that he and other restaurant owners were going to “unite to fight this absurd law.”
Tejedor, 500 miles (800 km) to the northeast in Castell?n, was the first to join him. In a nation where 31.5% of the population smokes (often with a drink or snack in hand), the new restrictions, he worries, will imperil business. “Already, in the first days of the law, we saw a huge drop in our clientele,” he says. “This is a question of survival. I don’t smoke, but I have to protect those who do because I don’t want to end up unemployed.” (Could New York City ban outdoor smoking?)
The rebellion is taking diverse forms. Some restaurant owners are launching petitions to get the law repealed. Other public facilities that have long welcomed cigarettes are trying to turn themselves into private smoking clubs, so that “members” will still be able to light up. (One kink to be worked out: the law prohibits employees from working in an environment — even someone’s home — where they are subject to secondhand smoke. Which is why, in one community center in Reus, Catalonia, the servers stop at the threshold of the designated smoking-club room, and hand the drinks across the doorway.)
They’re not the only ones thinking creatively. In order to lessen the economic impact of the ban, Hotel la Posada, in the Andalusian town of Montellano, has started offering a free drink to every client who has to get up from the table to smoke outside. And in Boiro, a town in the northwestern region of Galicia, the owner of the Bar Farmassia is serving his famous tripe stew — along with other tapas — in now useless ashtrays. (Comment on this story.)
The most common form of resistance, however, appears to be passive. By Jan. 4, Spain’s Federation of Consumers in Action had received more than 1,000 complaints from patrons about bars and restaurants that weren’t complying with the ban. And even those that do fulfill the letter of the law may find a way around its spirit in the form of a good outdoor heater. Indeed, despite the chilly temperatures, clients seem to be taking with new fervor to sidewalk caf?s and bars. The general manager of one leading company in the sector told Spanish news agency EFE that his firm’s mushroom-shaped heaters were “practically sold out throughout the country.” (See TIME’s video of the smoking ban in French restaurants.)
But Tejedor and his comrades are choosing the more active form of resistance. On Friday, the bar of his restaurant was crowded at lunchtime, and nearly every client, he says, was puffing away. Inspectors from the Health Ministry had been in the day before, taking notes, but he has yet to be fined. Even if he is, though, he says he’ll keep fighting. “This is about rights,” he says. “Look in the constitution. As Spaniards, we have as much a right to smoke as not to smoke.”
On New Year’s Day, Spain finally relinquished its status as one of Europe’s last refuges for the smoker. A 2006 law had banned smoking in the workplace and required the creation of non-smoking sections in larger restaurants and bars, but because of ample loopholes and lax enforcement, it was largely ineffective. In fact, in the first three years of the law’s existence, smoking among Spaniards actually increased 6.7%. But this new law means business. Not only does it ban smoking in all enclosed public spaces and even some open-air ones, it also prescribes fines for infractions, from $40 for individuals to as much as $13,000 for establishments that flout the law. Gone forever, it would seem, are those dark Spanish bars made hazy by the dense plumes emerging from countless cigarettes. (See how the French are ignoring their smoking ban.)
Just not in Castell?n. Or San Pedro de Alc?ntara. Or Valencia. Ever since the law went into effect, a small but growing number of bars and restaurants have joined in open rebellion against it, blatantly encouraging smoking and collecting signatures to have the law appealed. Jos? Eugenio Arias, owner of the Asadaor de Guadalmina, was the first to defy the prohibition. On Jan. 3, he hung posters around his restaurant in San Pedro de Alc?ntara, on Spain’s southern coast, saying that smoking is allowed, and told Spanish television that he and other restaurant owners were going to “unite to fight this absurd law.”
Tejedor, 500 miles (800 km) to the northeast in Castell?n, was the first to join him. In a nation where 31.5% of the population smokes (often with a drink or snack in hand), the new restrictions, he worries, will imperil business. “Already, in the first days of the law, we saw a huge drop in our clientele,” he says. “This is a question of survival. I don’t smoke, but I have to protect those who do because I don’t want to end up unemployed.” (Could New York City ban outdoor smoking?)
The rebellion is taking diverse forms. Some restaurant owners are launching petitions to get the law repealed. Other public facilities that have long welcomed cigarettes are trying to turn themselves into private smoking clubs, so that “members” will still be able to light up. (One kink to be worked out: the law prohibits employees from working in an environment — even someone’s home — where they are subject to secondhand smoke. Which is why, in one community center in Reus, Catalonia, the servers stop at the threshold of the designated smoking-club room, and hand the drinks across the doorway.)
They’re not the only ones thinking creatively. In order to lessen the economic impact of the ban, Hotel la Posada, in the Andalusian town of Montellano, has started offering a free drink to every client who has to get up from the table to smoke outside. And in Boiro, a town in the northwestern region of Galicia, the owner of the Bar Farmassia is serving his famous tripe stew — along with other tapas — in now useless ashtrays. (Comment on this story.)
The most common form of resistance, however, appears to be passive. By Jan. 4, Spain’s Federation of Consumers in Action had received more than 1,000 complaints from patrons about bars and restaurants that weren’t complying with the ban. And even those that do fulfill the letter of the law may find a way around its spirit in the form of a good outdoor heater. Indeed, despite the chilly temperatures, clients seem to be taking with new fervor to sidewalk caf?s and bars. The general manager of one leading company in the sector told Spanish news agency EFE that his firm’s mushroom-shaped heaters were “practically sold out throughout the country.” (See TIME’s video of the smoking ban in French restaurants.)
But Tejedor and his comrades are choosing the more active form of resistance. On Friday, the bar of his restaurant was crowded at lunchtime, and nearly every client, he says, was puffing away. Inspectors from the Health Ministry had been in the day before, taking notes, but he has yet to be fined. Even if he is, though, he says he’ll keep fighting. “This is about rights,” he says. “Look in the constitution. As Spaniards, we have as much a right to smoke as not to smoke.”
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Frank Davis adds to the article in TIME about the Spanish Rebellion:
The Spanish Defensora del Poble (Defender of the People, or Ombudsman), Maria Luisa Cava de Llano, today called for a change in the law, saying that people had “had enough” of prohibitions.
Born in Barcelona, Cava de Llano was at one time Deputy Prime Minister of Ibiza, and belongs to the conservative Popular Party.
The Acting Ombudsman Maria Luisa Cava de Llano, called on Tuesday for a tobacco law that “reconciles interests” and “does not harm anyone” because, in her view, “People have had enough of prohibitions, and need freedom of movement to discern what bothers or does not bother others.”
Speaking on Spanish television, picked up by Europa Press, Cava de Llano explained that since the entry into force of the reform, her department has received several complaints from owners of bars and restaurants that claim to be suffering the consequences of its implementation .
“Fundamentally they complain that they have spent much money on the previous rules, compartmentalizing their premises for smokers and nonsmokers and establishing a series of conditions to be met in their establishments and now, in the middle of economic crisis, they are losing customers and sales,” she said.
In this regard, she highlighted the “remarkable” decline in consumption in their places, and restaurateurs say that they are also “very concerned because there is developing a kind of rebellion by people willing to break the law to go back to the old rules” .
“In the media increasing numbers of people are seen joining these protests, where they try to start a legislative initiative, and get the number of signatures needed to bring this bill to Congress for amendment,” added the Ombudsman .
Spanish social habits will see a drastic change when the government’s new anti-tobacco legislation takes effect Sunday.
January 2, 2011
The anti-tobacco law, approved by the Congress before Christmas, prohibits smoking in closed public spaces, including bars and restaurants, with few exceptions, such as bingo halls.
The law will bring Spain into line with the majority of countries in the EU, where smoking bans have been progressively introduced in recent years.
But it will mean an end to the Spanish habit of having a coffee and a cigarette and has divided opinion in the country between those in favor and those against the law.
Those against the law include groups representing the bar and restaurant sector, who are worried they will lose business, causing many to close.
They insist that the ban will cause a fall of between five and 10 percent in the number of customers and the loss of around 50,000 jobs in a sector that employs about 1.5 million people.
That prediction is questioned by the National Committee for the Prevention of Tobacco,(CNPT) which points to the experience of other EU countries, where a smoking ban has not hit the bar and restaurant industry.
Ireland, for example, saw a 13.7 percent increase in employment in the sector, France witnessed a 3 percent rise in income, while in Britain the number of bars increased by about 14 percent.
Those in favor of smoking contest those facts by using the cliched phrase ‘Spain in different.’
“Spain is a country that has its own special idiosyncrasy in terms of socialization, and leisure culture in public spaces, which makes it difficult to compare with other countries,” they argue.
A study carried out the Spanish Society for Family and Community Medicine refutes that claim. In the survey of 2,935 people, 32.8 percent said they would visit more bars if smoking was forbidden, while just half that number, 16.4 percent said they were less likely to go out. 68 percent of those questioned were in favor of the ban.
There is another major factor associated with the ban: a study carried out by labor u nions UGT and CC.OO conformed that only 3 percent of the bars and restaurants in Spain currently prohibit smoking.
That means that the vast majority of the 1.5 million workers in the sector are exposed to the risks of passive smoking and currently run a risk 30 percent higher that those who work in a smoke-free atmosphere of developing lung cancer.
About 55,000 people are estimated to die prematurely every year in Spain as a result of the effects of tobacco. More than 3,000 of those are people who suffered as a result of passive smoking.
The CNPT estimates the smoking ban will cause a reduction of around 4 percent in the number of smokers in Spain. A ban on smoking in the workplace, which was introduced in 2006, reduced the number of smokers by 7 percent, saving an estimated 1,855 lives a year.
Extending the smoking ban will save over 1,000 lives a year according to the CNPT.
Spain votes for tough smoking ban
22 December 2010
Spanish lawmakers have voted to approve a tough new anti-smoking law, meaning that from 2 January, bars and restaurants will be no-smoking zones.
Smokers will also not be allowed to light up on television broadcasts, near hospitals or in school playgrounds.
The bill, proposed by PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and his governing Socialist Party, was passed in the lower house by 189 votes to 154.
Bar and cafe owners fear the law will adversely affect business.
Bar complaints
Spain was once famed for its smoke-filled bars, corner cafes and restaurants, but the new law tightens restrictions introduced in 2006 by forbidding smoking in any enclosed public space.
Tuesday’s vote rejected a Senate amendment to allow casinos to have smoking areas. Moves to allow bars to build sealed cubicles for smokers also failed.
While the 2006 anti-smoking law prohibited smoking in the workplace, it came under fire for letting bar and restaurant owners choose whether or not to allow smoking: most permitted it.
The BBC’s Sarah Rainsford in Madrid gauged reaction to the smoking crackdown when it was announced in October
Bar owners have complained that the new legislation will lead to a massive loss of business – bad news for an industry that has already seen a drop of 15% in sales from the recession.
But doctors argue the new legislation will help smokers give up, which correspondents say is vital when 160 Spaniards a day die from smoking-related illnesses, four of them from passive smoking.
Spanish Health Minister Leire Pajin has called on Spaniards to share responsibility for the new law’s success.
Spain keeps lighting up despite government smoking bans
March 23, 2006
By Keith Johnson, The Wall Street Journal
By Keith Johnson, The Wall Street Journal
MADRID — Shortly after the Spanish government passed a new antismoking law in January, Juan Fernandez hung a huge sign in his restaurant window with the words: “Smoking allowed here.”
“The government policies are just ridiculous,” says Mr. Fernandez, whose combination bar and eatery near the Prado Museum in central Madrid is a popular hangout. “I don’t pay them the slightest attention,” he adds as he stubs out a cigarette in a big glass ashtray at the bar.
For the world’s tobacco companies, Mr. Fernandez represents a market worth fighting for. Like other European countries before it, Spain this year banned smoking in workplaces and outlawed cigarette sales by newsstands. It also ordered bars and restaurants above a certain size to create smoking and nonsmoking sections in the hope that a no-smoking ethos would spread across the country.
But in contrast to much of Europe, the approach isn’t working here. Small bars and restaurants like Mr. Fernandez’s have overwhelmingly kept their ashtrays — and their customers. Large taverns that tried to go smoke-free rather than carve out smoking sections watched their customers go elsewhere, so many reintroduced smoking to lure their clientele back. Newsstand owners, who say cigarettes made up 20 percent of their sales, have staged public protests across the country.
The result has been a tug of war between the Spanish government and cigarette makers, an illustration of what tobacco companies are willing to do to protect a fertile market. The key battle in Spain has been over prices: As soon as the government raised taxes, tobacco brands lowered prices. “Spain is a very important market, and we had to reserve the right to compete,” says Michael Pfeil, a spokesman for Philip Morris International, a unit of Altria Group Inc.
With health concerns, litigation and widening smoking bans steadily eroding sales and profits in the U.S., tobacco companies have long been on a quest for new and developing markets. Recently, as European countries like Britain, Italy and Ireland have adopted harsher antismoking measures, they have set their sights on Asia. Philip Morris, for example, is moving aggressively in the region, buying back a license to produce Marlboro in Japan and creating a joint venture in China to get a better foothold there.
But Spain still seems to promise good business. Only about one-third of adult Spaniards still smoke, but they are the heaviest smokers in the world after the Greeks, Bulgarians and Japanese.
For every man, woman and child in Spain in 2004, including nonsmokers, consumption in Spain was 2,274 cigarettes, compared with 1,230 in the U.S. that year, according to figures from the independent research organization ERC Group PLC. The Spanish figure is substantially higher than annual per capita consumption of 1,446 cigarettes in China, the beacon for international tobacco titans.
Even more striking, while smoking is falling in most industrialized countries, consumption in Spain has risen nearly 13 percent over the past decade, according to ERC. During that same period, smoking in France and Britain fell 40 percent.
Part of the reason for the rise, analysts say, is a notable increase in smoking among women since the death of Francisco Franco 30 years ago. Few women smoked openly during his repressive dictatorship, but they began lighting up afterward in response to heavy marketing by tobacco companies. Young people are also a receptive audience; some 20 percent of all high-school students in Spain smoke.
Led by Health Minister Elena Salgado, the Spanish government kicked off its antismoking campaign in the fall with a law banning all tobacco advertising on television, print and outdoor media.
It wasn’t until this January, though, that tougher laws kicked in. Not only did the government order restaurants and bars with a surface area larger than roughly 1,100 square feet to create nonsmoking areas. It also slapped new taxes on tobacco sales.
The levies, which ranged from 10 percent to 15 percent, were intended to raise the price of a pack of popular branded cigarettes — such as Marlboro, Chesterfield or Camel — to more than 3 euros ($3.63). Because the size of the tax was tied to the retail price, mainstream brands were harder hit than less-expensive, unknown labels.
Tobacco companies immediately rebelled. In mid-January, Philip Morris International slashed the price of its flagship Marlboro brand 30 percent, making the price of a pack of 20 Marlboro Reds 2.35 euros.
The reduction forced rivals — including Japan Tobacco Inc., which markets the Winston and Camel brands in Spain, and the Franco-Spanish company Altadis SA, which makes the Fortuna brand — to follow suit.
At Altadis, the levies and subsequent price cut hurt. The company blamed Spain’s new antismoking legislation when it announced in early February that it would have to cut 170 million euros from its profit forecast for 2006. It also accelerated a cost-cutting program by closing its marketing division, laying off 300 workers and announcing the closing of two plants.
The Spanish government counterattacked, this time with a two-pronged tax increase. It raised the basic tax rate on cigarettes yet again. But it also raised the minimum tax on tobacco, which meant that all cigarette brands would have to pay at least 2 euros of taxes per carton of cigarettes. The minimum tax was aimed primarily at less-expensive brands that are popular among teens.
So far, mainstream labels have welcomed the government’s latest gambit, saying it puts them on an equal footing with the makers of less-expensive cigarettes. Philip Morris International’s chief financial officer, Herman Waldemer, who lobbied last year for a minimum tax increase, calls it “a major step forward.” Over the past month, Philip Morris and Altadis have raised their prices again. Recently, both also reiterated that despite the new antismoking legislation, they consider Spain one of their most promising markets.
The tit-for-tat war looks as if it will continue. For consumers, cigarette prices in Spain are still lower than they are in most markets. A pack of Marlboro Reds here sells for 2.75 euros, for example, compared with around 6 euros in the U.S. and 8 euros in Britain.
Smoking and Fuming
By JAVIER MAR?AS
Madrid
January 22, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Madrid
January 22, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
FOR far too many years, almost 40, the people of Spain were treated like minors by Franco’s dictatorship. But it seems that some people among us still yearn for that era. The new antismoking law in Spain, which went into effect with the new year and bans smoking in workplaces and restricts it in many bars and restaurants, is a case in point: it is a clear example of the state trying to regulate citizens’ private lives and customs. As such, it is a measure that is far more befitting of Franco than a democracy.
Now, I should say immediately that I am a smoker, like nearly a third of my fellow Spaniards, and I’ve never tried to quit. I know smoking isn’t good for my health, but neither is walking in the polluted streets of Madrid or Barcelona, nor is living in a world where the United States refuses to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol.
Many of my friends are smokers too; many are not. But we have always managed to come to terms by asking if anyone minds our smoking – without the government’s intervention.
Of course, nonsmokers should not be subjected to secondhand smoke nor obliged to suffer its effects, and in this vein, limits should be placed on smokers in enclosed, common-use spaces. But the government’s argument that it is seeking to improve public health is hypocritical. The Spanish Treasury takes in colossal revenues, direct and indirect, thanks to this pernicious habit. Every time the government needs to find a way to finance some exceptional expense, a new cigarette tax is levied. The implicit message to Spanish citizens is this: “Smoke! Smoke more — so we can balance our budget.”
Indeed, to escape the taint of hypocrisy, Spain would have to match its new antismoking measures with an array of others fighting everything else in the world that is at all harmful. Nowhere have I ever heard, for example, that cars are obliged to carry, just above the driver’s-side door, a warning, like those on cigarette boxes, that “Driving a car may cause death, grisly amputations, quadriplegia and involuntary manslaughter.”
I have also never seen anyone lay blame on sunbathers who go to the beach and almost drown, or mountain climbers who get lost and fall off cliffs, and whose rescue incurs a tremendous expense and endangers the lives of others. Nobody is forcing anyone to swim in the ocean or climb mountains, just as nobody is forcing smokers to smoke, and yet the latter are regarded practically as criminals.
People should be allowed to make decisions about their health as they see fit, even if that means undermining it. To keep someone from smoking on the job, if he or she has a private office where smoking does not endanger or annoy anyone, is an unacceptable act of paternalism.
As far as bars and restaurants are concerned, the ban is thankfully not absolute: in the end — after tremendous protests and battles over the law, that is — in establishments of less than 1,100 square feet (spaces that are too small to be divided into smoking and nonsmoking areas), the owner can decide if the place will be smoke-free or not. This way each citizen can decide whether or not to enter — and I, for one, will not go to a restaurant where I can’t smoke. So far, it seems that the majority of these smaller bars and restaurants will opt to allow their clients to blow as many smoke rings as they care to, for fear of losing them.
Most probably, the Spanish people, rather civically minded in general, will not have too much trouble complying with the law, basically because it is only partly abusive and irrational. But watch out: the government is also trying to lower alcohol consumption and, in an unprecedented move, to alter the country’s traditional schedule. People in Spain continue to eat lunch around 2:30, and to dine around 10 in the evening; we go to bed late. Efforts to make us more like the rest of the world in that regard strike a blow at the very essence of Spanishness: should our schedules change, we’ll be much more like France or Switzerland — and definitely more boring.
A totalitarian state is one that sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong and attempts to intervene in every aspect of its citizens’ private lives, and many governments today, whether left, right or center, have developed this practice of behaving like busybodies. The old notion that only dictatorships can be totalitarian seems terribly na?ve nowadays. And that is the worst thing about this antismoking law and others of the same ilk: they unfortunately prove that totalitarianism is no longer incompatible with the democratic systems that once guaranteed our freedoms.
— Javier Mar?as is the author, most recently, of “Your Face Tomorrow.” This article was translated by Kristina Cordero from the Spanish.
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