A puff and it’s 5,000 euros but Greeks are unrepentant!

The ministry of Health is still under heavy pressure because of the problematic implementation of the anti-smoking law.

A week after the blockade of the ministry from restaurant owners asking for smoking allowance in their stores due to the depression, the reactions are heating up once again from the side of the anti-smokers.

The NGO nosmoke.gr sent a report – impeachment on Monday, December 13, to the EC and the European Parliament for the outright abuse of the anti-smoking law and the continued mockery of the citizens by the state.

There is no safe passive smoking

«Over 20,000 Greeks die every year from passive smoking related diseases, while the cost of smoking for our insurance funds reaches up to 2bil euros per year, in a time period when our country is really straggling to avoid bankruptcy», as we read in the report.

It also reminds us that «the Greek State has ratified the Treaty-Framework of the World Health Organization for the control of smoking under law 3420/2005. And the WHO guidelines for the successful implementation of this treaty state that there is no safe level of exposure environmental smoke due to smoking».

«What we live in Greece is a constant mockery by the state. The government through its relevant minster Andreas Loverdos, does not hesitate to mock the Greek and European legal order by not implementing the voted law, in violation of the Constitution and prevention politics by the WHO and the EU» the statement concludes.

It should be noted that Nosmoke.gr has reached the State Council asking to lift the exemptions in the smoking ban, which were provided by the previous law (3730/2008). However, this case was not debated at the Supreme Administrative Court because according to the judge the new law (3868/2010) was already voted, moving the ban to all closed public spaces.

The organization is calling on all citizens to boycott the places where the law is no upheld, to protest towards owners for not complying with the law and in any case of circumvention to call 1142 for an immediate complaint.

The controls are done regularly, says the ministry of Health

Meanwhile, according to the ministry of Health, from October 1st 2010 when the antismoking law was effective, there have been 6,346 controls mainly in places of sanitary concern.  

About half of them were done in Athens, followed by Thessaloniki, Piraeus, Iraklio and Patra. As for the «no smoking» places, the majority of the controls is for coffee-bars (66%), restaurants (15%), public services (4%), hospitals (1%), refectories (13% and schools (1%).

Fines of 160,400 euros have been issued in total. The lion's share was in Thessaloniki where the Municipal Police issued fines of 57,659 euros, 52,550 in Athens, 42,400 in Piraeus and 7,800 in Iraklio.

The highest fine so far was 1,200 euros and directed to store managers of sanitary concern in Thessaloniki, Athens and Piraeus.