The Basque Country, now that most of ETA have been arrested / grown up / shot, has turned it’s attention to weightier matters and decide to enact what must be one of Europes most stringent anti-smoking laws.
Describing the ineffectual national law as useless, the regional parliament approved a vicious law yesterday that bans smoking in all public enclosed places, outdoors within areas frequented by children and in the grounds of hospitals or medical centres. “This is a war on tobacco, with the aim of eradicating the practice in the Basque Country” declared the regional Minister for work and social policy, Gemma Zabaleta, who continued to say that “this law is based on EU recommendations and goes far further”.
Smoking in enclosed places, even private, when a minor is present will also be illegal, as will smoking in cars when carrying children.
The law has as one of its aim “the eradication of the practice of presenting smoking as a normal habit to children”, which means adults cannot smoke in front of children in playgrounds, schools or other such places, even outside and round the back of the bike sheds. Or in any area destined for the use of children under the age of 18 (ie concerts, etc).
Fines of between 3,000 and 600,000€ will be liberally handed out.
This regional law is far stricter than the proposed reform of the national law, and will remain in place even when the new national law is approved. Seeing as to how the national law is still bogged down in committee, it could still be a year or so away in any case. The new Basque law will start on the 1st of January 2011.
More from El Pais.
This is not a war against tobacco – it is a war against smokers – much like the war on jews and gypsies in 1930’s Germany. It is a war to remove individual freedoms from PEOPLE. This is merely the start, many more groups have been identified eg drinkers and the obese using the cynical guise of ‘public health’.
It looks as if this has originated from the EU and the WHO – they are flexing their muscles, and who knows what pressure Spanish politicians have been subjected to, to make them bend over and take it where the sun don’t shine. AND it seems that THEY intend to beat Spanish citizens with a big stick until those citizens submit and bow down to their political will. A vicious law indeed! There is something very very evil about it all.
An earlier blog of mine looks at some of the invidious tactics employed to bring Spain to its knees;
http://freedom-2-choose.blogspot.com/2010/06/spaniards-should-take-bull-by-horns.html
Since this was written, it has come to my notice that a nationwide independent poll in the UK of young people under 25yrs. They are almost unanimously AGAINST the UK smoke ban. This is a similar result to the straw poll of Spanish, mentioned in the blog. This demonstrates how far from the truth ‘official’ public support polls are. The public do NOT want this law and apart from a few fanatics, they NEVER did!!
Also an independent study has proved beyond doubt that the hospitality trade has been decimated by the smoke ban. There is NO QUESTION about it, despite the continuing claims by anti-tobacco groups. This will happen in Spain too if you allow them to get away with this attack on freedom.
http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=88221&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ma-rss-general-news+%28General+News+Rss+news+feed+for+Morning+Advertiser%29
summary of the actual study is here;
http://takingliberties.squarespace.com/storage/Smoking%20Gun%20final1.pdf
This is NOT a time to sit in your comfy chair, shaking your head in disbelief at this current rapid turn of events. If you sit back and do nothing -it will happen and I have no doubt that you will regret it with hindsight.
Yes, but the Basques have always had that Nazi streak in them. Mind you, the Indians (‘hindues’) have gone one better though, they have censored and removed any smoking in any film seen in the cinema or on TV. Beat that Gemma!
Howdy just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you
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