E-cigarettes in Spain

Spain: Licences to operate a tobacconist’s business are being sold at auction for up to €7m, press reports. If the Tobacco Market Bill, restricting the sale of vaping products to tobacconists, is eventually passed this would represent a big burden for e-cigarette retailers who would have to turn their businesses into tobacconists.

Spain: Deputy Aina Vidal Sáez has urged the government – in which her party, the left-wing Podemos, participates – to regulate nicotine-free pods exactly like nicotine-containing e-cigarettes. Sáez expressed concern yesterday about pods’ flavours and their use among young people. She criticised the lack of health warnings on nicotine-free products, which are currently unregulated and therefore not subject to packaging and retail restrictions.

Spain: The largest anti-tobacco organisation in Spain, the Smoking Prevention Committee (CNPT), has launched a campaign against tobacco and nicotine products, with the hashtag #stophumotabaconicotina (stop smoke, tobacco, and nicotine). The CNPT is urging the government to pass the regulations on vaping and tobacco products that it announced in May.

Spain: The Smoking Prevention Committee (CNPT) – the largest anti-tobacco organisation in Spain, representing several medical and anti-tobacco bodies – has criticised the government’s proposal in the Tobacco Market Bill to open 203 new tobacco shops. If passed, the bill would restrict the sale of e-cigarettes and e-liquids to tobacconists only within five years. The CNPT says that instead of increasing the number of tobacconists, the current number should be cut by half. The CNPT also criticised the delaying of the Tobacco Control and Prevention Plan 2021-2025, which was meant to be approved eight months ago and has not yet even been presented. CNPT president Andrés Zamorano said he fears neither the Tobacco Plan nor the amendment to the tobacco laws that the government announced will take place before the elections that are due in November 2023. 

Spain: The National Committee for Smoking Prevention (CNPT) has published a statement expressing concern about the widely reported decision of the Ministry of Health to stop work on an amendment of the Tobacco Act. The CNPT, which is the leading anti-tobacco organisation in Spain and is associated with medical and health organisations, is urging the ministry to confirm whether or not it will indeed abandon its legislative plans. It also insists on the need to approve laws that reduce nicotine and tobacco consumption and asks the ministry about the Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking 2021-2025, which was meant to have been approved already. Both the Tobacco Act amendment and the prevention and control plan were intended to impose further restrictions on both tobacco and vaping products.

Spain: The Ministry of Health has decided not to continue with its planned amendment to the Tobacco Act, press reports. The government has decided there is not enough time before its term ends at the end of 2023 to undertake the reform, which would have banned smoking on open-air terraces, in cars with children or pregnant women present, and in open-air stadiums. It would also have established neutral packaging and further restricted the advertising of tobacco and vaping products. The amendment was framed within the Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking 2021-2025, which was meant to be approved by June 2022 and now presumably will not be approved.