Price of a packet of cigarettes increased, list of non-smoking places expanded… If the government has just revealed the main measures of its 2023-2027 anti-smoking plan, other countries have already taken different decisions to fight once morest consumption of cigarettes. Around the world in 80 seconds.
A year ago, New Zealand set itself the challenge of becoming a tobacco-free country by 2025. Will it succeed? In the meantime, it is the first country in the world to have adopted a law implementing an annual increase in the legal age for smoking. In other words, people born on or following January 1, 2009 will not be able to purchase cigarettes in the future.
Banning cigarettes to the next generation: this is also what England wants to establish. At the beginning of October, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made a speech to this effect at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. “I propose that in the future we increase the (legal) smoking age by one year each year, announced the head of the English government on this occasion. (…) This means that a young person of 14 years old today will never be legally sold a cigarette.”
No smoking outdoors in Milan
Last January, Italy also strengthened its anti-smoking measures, which apply in the same way to vaping. In particular, the ban on indoor smoking rooms and the extension of the ban on smoking in the open air “in places frequented by minors and pregnant women”. In Milan, it was already forbidden to smoke outdoors in public places, such as parks, stadiums, bus stops and sometimes even cemeteries since 2021. When permitted, smokers must now respect a distance of 10 meters from other people.
Further north, Sweden implemented similar measures in 2019, with a formal ban on smoking on platforms, at bus shelters, around train stations, in markets, in front of football stadiums or other sports facilities, around the fields games or even near schools.
Smoking banned in certain apartments in the United States
Another country frequently cited in the fight once morest smoking: the United States, where the laws vary according to the federal states. In New York, as in some other large cities, some trustees prohibit smoking in apartments. In Texas, Ohio and Washington State, it is impossible to light a cigarette within 6 meters of your workplace.
For its part, the German government was considering this summer introducing a ban on smoking in cars in the presence of children or pregnant women. In France, this is already the case for minors. With a fine of 135 euros in the event of an infraction.
