Health Minister Orazio Schillaci announced new measures against traditional cigarettes and novel tobacco and nicotine products in a hearing before the Social Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday.
New measures against tobacco will be introduced in Italy to address the prevention and fight against smoking. The government wants to achieve the European Cancer Plan’s goal of creating a ‘tobacco-free generation’.
“Measures will have to be taken to guarantee all citizens maximum protection of their health, a fundamental right of the individual and an interest of the community,” said the minister.
The ban on smoking in open-air places in the presence of minors and pregnant women will be extended, and smoking rooms in closed premises will no longer be allowed.
The minister said is necessary to take into account “the constantly increasing diffusion of new products on the market and the growing evidence on their possible harmful effects on health.”
For this reason, the ban will also be extended to the emissions of new products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. In addition, there are plans to extend the advertising ban now applied to cigarettes to new products containing nicotine.
The minister explained that smoking is “still the main cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in Italy” and that the target, as set at the EU level, is that less than 5% of the population will consume tobacco by 2040.
According to data from the ‘Report on Smoking in Italy’, presented on World No Tobacco Day 2022, almost one in four Italians is a smoker. There are around 800,000 more smokers than two years ago.
As of 2019, smokers of heated tobacco cigarettes are also on the rise (3.3%) as one in three (36.6%) consider them less harmful than traditional cigarettes. E-cig users also increased from 1.7% in 2019 to 2.4% today.
On 8 January, the Sirchia law that established for the first time in Italy the ban on smoking in enclosed premises open to the public turned 20 years old. The law was proposed and strongly advocated by the then Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia and only fully came into force in 2005, radically changing the customs and social etiquette of Italians.
On this occasion, former Minister Sirchia called for stronger government intervention to push forward ‘the anti-smoking agenda’, especially in light of the products that “multinationals have invented to differentiate themselves and win back the market, such as electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products.”
According to data by the Health Ministry from May 2022, it is estimated that over 93,000 deaths per year in Italy are attributable to smoking, with direct and indirect costs of over €26 billion. Smoking is responsible for 20.6% of deaths among men and 7.9% of all deaths among women.
Minister Schillaci emphasised that alongside support for prevention and cessation measures, “it is considered necessary and strategic to ensure maximum support for European Union actions.” In this sense, the ministry intends to transpose the EU Commission’s delegated directive providing for the elimination of certain exemptions concerning heated tobacco products by 23 July 2023.
“This process aims to allow the different multiple interests related to tobacco products, involving economic ministries, not to override health protection,” Schillaci clarified.
(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)
Source: euractiv.com
