Tobacco-free day: laws and bans to quit smoking

The law that revolutionized the way of life of Italians by introducing the no smoking in public places. It is the Sirchia law, passed on January 16, 2003. With it, cigarette sales fell by 27%, going from about 93,000 tons in 2005 to 68,000 tons in 2018. According to the Higher Institute of Health, it was mainly women who quit and those smokers already willing to do so, who have found in the prohibitions of the law an opportunity to say enough is enough.

But the law served. And it is precisely through new laws and regulations that the fight against smoking has been done in recent years. In Italy and abroad. In world no tobacco day we have collected some of the ideas, proposals and measures already taken to put out more and more cigarettes.

In Italy, where 90,000 people a year still die from smoking-related causes and there are about 10 million smokers, two more have been added to that historic provision: the ban on smoking in cars in the presence of children and pregnant women and packages with images to warn of the risks associated with smoking. The former was more effective than the latter. Bans and economic leverage work.

PROHIBITIONS (WITHOUT GETTING TO PROHIBITIONISM)
The city of Milano has banned cigarettes in parks, at public transport stops and at stadiums since 2021 with the aim of being smoke free in 2030. In Sweden, as of 2019, smoking has been banned in playgrounds and terraces of bars and restaurants. Paris has 522 smoke free public parks. Smoking is prohibited in any green space in New York. In California it is prohibited on the beach and even on the street if you are less than 6 meters from the entrance to a public office.

Enlarge the areas where smoking is prohibited, as was the case for the law at the time Sirchia, decreases smokers. The 2003 law would help stop nearly a million smokers.

The Government of the New Zeland announced the gradual increase in the age at which smoking becomes legal to the point of prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2004. In addition to this a significant reduction in the level of nicotine allowed in tobacco products, a minimum price for the sale of tobacco and the limitation of the places where it is possible to sell cigarettes and the like.

COSTS
The World Health Organization dedicates the No Tobacco Day 2021 to support for those who want to quit smoking. The Scientific Committee for the fight against smoking of the Veronesi Foundation has indicated a way: “a significant increase in the price of cigarette packs, of loose tobacco, of heated tobacco devices, through the increase of excise duties ».

It is the same that repeats the Istituto Superiore di Sanità: «The most effective is the increase in the price of cigarettes: when tobacco products cost a lot, people are incentivized to stop and discouraged to start ». In Australia it has already worked. On the other side of the world, a pack costs from 18 to 30 euros and smokers have steadily decreased, while year after year the prices of cigarettes increased, for seven consecutive years until 2020.