Health inspectors will be able to issue smoking fines

OFFICERS of the Public Health Services will be joining forces with the police in conducting surprise raids on shops and public buildings to ensure the smoking ban is strictly enforced.

The Public Health Services are currently promoting an amendment to the Fines Law that would empower the department’s officers to issue on-the-spot fines – which until now has been the province of the police.

According to the director of the Public Health Services Giorgos Giorgallas, 34 public health officers will be made available for inspections and fines. The officers will conduct the raids during non-office hours.

Giorgallas said the department is doing all it can to ensure that smoking-related regulations are enforced. In addition to checking restaurants and nightspots to see whether the smoking ban is applied, the Public Health Services monitors the market for signs of illegal advertising of tobacco. Some cases of illegal advertising have been prosecuted and the violators fined.

The department also gathers samples of tobacco products which it then has analysed in laboratories to determine the tar, nicotine and carbon dioxide content.

Giorgallas said that all tobacco companies and importers of tobacco products are obliged, under EU law, to submit at the end of each year to the Public Health Services a report of the ingredients of tobacco products. The government department then forwards this to the European Commission.

Meanwhile the Cyprus Anti-Smoking Coalition yesterday urged the government to step up its implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which Cyprus has signed and ratified.

Citing a recent report in the medical journal Lancet, the coalition said that 5.5 deaths from smoking could be prevented in the present decade (2005-2015) if FCTC members implemented only four measures requiring minimal expenditures.

Every 6.5 seconds a current or former smoker dies, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Around 5.4 million deaths a year are caused by tobacco. Smoking is set to kill 6.5 million people in 2015 and 8.3 million humans in 2030, with the biggest rise in low-and middle-income countries

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