The Barcelona City Council has announced this Friday that from July it will ban smoking on all its beaches following the results of the pilot test it promoted in 2021, for which it will promote an information campaign that will start this month and until June in the five kilometers of the Barcelona coastline.
As reported by the Councilor for Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition, Eloi Badia, in the beaches where the measure was carried out “there was a very reduced presence of cigarettes” and the fact is that this measure, in addition to seeking a healthier environment and protect passive smokerssearch avoid generating wastebecause cigarette butts are an environmental problem as they take ten years to disappear.
This measure has to be approved in the plenary session of the town hall, but Badia has advanced that in June they will have “majorities to approve the ban on smoking on all beaches.”
Along these lines, the Councilor for Health, Aging and Care, Gemma Tarafa, explained that a study that took place in Spain in 2019 revealed that 135,000 children suffered the consequences as passive smokers and that 3,000 young people under the age of 19 were hospitalized because of tobacco.
Tarafa has also pointed out that the score on the satisfaction of the residents of smoke-free beaches has been 8 out of 10.
“In Spain is working to approve a regulationwithin the framework of the legislation of the tobacco law, which will be completed by mid-2023 and which will prohibit smoking in many open spaces, including beaches”, the councilor concluded, with which Barcelona seeks to get ahead.
That of 2022 will be, therefore, the first smoke-free summer on Barcelona’s beaches and thus will culminate the pilot test that was carried out a year ago in four of the ten beaches of the city, with not only healthy but also environmental purposes.
According to the municipal calendar, the average bathing season runs from April 9 to 18, every weekend in April and May, and from September 12 to 25. The high season will start on May 28 and end on September 11.