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29th Mar 2024

Europeans back public smoking bans

  • The EU launched a €72 million anti-smoking campaign in 2005 (Photo: Wikipedia)

The European Commission has suggested that the rising support for public smoking bans means there could be an expansion of smoke-free policies across Europe, with 88 percent of citizens backing the approach - especially in countries that have introduced anti-smoking measures.

According to a fresh survey published by the European Commission on Tuesday (22 May), a majority of European smokers themselves favour smoke-free restaurants, offices and indoor workplaces.

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"This can only strengthen the momentum towards making European public and work places smoke-free by 2009," EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou said while presenting the study in Strasbourg.

While the bans on smoking in indoor public spaces of different types - such as metro, airports, offices, shops - enjoy the highest support (88%), Europeans are most reluctant to see such bans in bars and pubs (62%).

The 2007 survey has also showed that most Europeans are aware of the health dangers of smoking - although in countries such as Poland and Lithuania "relatively high numbers of people believe that passive smoking is not dangerous at all."

On the other hand, while there is "a certain level of consideration for non-smokers" the Danes have been singled out as the most inconsiderate smokers - willing to light a cigarette even when children and pregnant women are present.

In total, a third of Europeans (32%) are smokers, mostly Greeks (42%), Latvians, Hungarians and Bulgarians (36% each) while 64 percent of the Portuguese - the largest segment of any EU population - say that they have never smoked.

Almost one in three smokers have tried to give up over the past year, particularly among the Brits (46%) and Hungarians (43%), while the highest number of Austrians (82%) and Spaniards (80%) say they have not tried to give up at all.

Self-employed Europeans (27%) and managers (27%) are the least likely to quit the bad habit.

In 2005, the commission launched a pan-European anti-smoking campaign worth €72 million - the bloc's second biggest campaign on the topic targeted at young people, as the average age of European youngsters reaching for cigarettes had fallen to just 13 years.

Around 650,000 people die in EU member states every year because of smoking, while 80,000 adults are killed by second-hand tobacco smoke.

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