Ministers Fume Over Suggested Plan To Ban Smoking In Italy

According to report from local news media, the Italian health minister's suggested plans to extend smoking ban which includes the outdoor areas of parks and bars which drew the wrath of right-wing cabinet colleagues who tagged him a “Communist.”

However, a technocrat with no party affiliation, Minister Orazio Schillaci, said in January that he'd crackdown on smoking, including e-cigarettes, widely used by teenagers.

According to report from La Stampa newspaper on Monday, the new rules will however include the outside areas of bars and at public transport stops. The report further claimed that the prohibition will also be extended to parks if pregnant women and children are present in the area.

Vittorio Sgarbi, Junior Culture Minister, who's known for always expressing his opinions called Schillaci's perspective “intimidating” and thus, said that such bans would instead encourage people to smoke.

Sgarbi told AdnKronos news agency that “this is something typical of an authoritarian and dictatorial communist regime”

According to Italy's top health institute, it recorded about 24% adult Italian smokers in 2022, roughly 12.4 million people and thus, the highest percentage of smokers recorded since 2009.

In 2003, the government passed an indoor smoke ban which came into force two years later.

Fondazione Umberto Veronesi, a health association estimated at least 43,000 death every year which is caused by smoke related reasons in Italy.

But the suggested clampdown also faces skepticism from Deputy Prime Minister and League party leader Matteo Salvini, who quit cigarettes four years ago but said the open-air ban on e-cigarettes was "exaggerated."

"Electronic cigarettes are helping a lot of people to abandon regular cigarettes," he added on Twitter.