If passed, Portugal’s new law will ban smoking not only indoors but outdoors as well.
In an effort to create a tobacco-free generation by 2040, Portugal's government proposed new legislation to restrict tobacco sales and to ban smoking in outdoor spaces next to public buildings such as schools, colleges and hospitals, sports venues, outside restaurants, bars, and coffee shops starting from October 23.
Restaurants, bars, and nightclubs that have designated smoking rooms with sufficient separation are permitted to keep them in place until 2030. Creating new smoking areas will be banned from October next year.
The government aims that by 2025, the only places where tobacco products will be sold are in airports, gas stations, and cigarette shops. They will no longer be sold in areas like restaurants, bars, concert halls and venues, casinos, fairs and exhibitions, either directly or through vending machines. The products will also not be allowed at music festivals.
Additionally, it would ban the sale of flavored heated tobacco products and reduce the exposure to tobacco products and vapes by limiting access and reducing "advertising, promotion, and sponsorship, to discourage experimentation, consumption, and dependence" by young people.
The new regulations is in compliance with the European directive of June 29, 2022, which equates heated tobacco with other tobacco products.
Health minister Manuel Pizarro said the proposed measures are not meant to punish smokers or company owners but rather to address tobacco usage. The minister also defended the "balanced" effort to prohibit smoking in bars and restaurants, claiming that the hospitality industry had not suffered financial harm since the law restricting smoking in enclosed public areas was introduced in 2007.