Tirana urged to do more on fight against smoking

TIRANA, Sep. 22 – The World Health Organization has called on Albania’s government to alter its legislation in order to properly enforce its ban on smoking in public places.
Albania already has a law that bans smoking in bars and restaurants, but it has hardly been enforced.
There were slight efforts from the authorities at the beginning, fining the coffee bars, but they soon were forgotten.
Albania adopted an anti-smoking law in 2007 with the help of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, and the WHO.
Anshu Banerjee, the head of WHO in Albania, told the regional news agency Balkan Insight that a lack of enforcement had failed to yield results and the law had to be tightened.
“People from the health inspector’s office could come and see there is smoking taking place in a public building and they can issue a fine. However, the mechanism to collect the fine is not really well-defined in the law,” he said.
Current legislation allows any individuals or businesses breaching the ban to be fined up to 50,000 leks.
Albania is required to ban smoking in public spaces under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, FCTC, which it adopted in 2005. There is no deadline for the banning of smoking in public places.
Earlier this year, WHO brought in a consultant to work with various Albanian ministries in order to identify weaknesses were and changes that could strengthen the law.
Albania has 872,000 smokers out of a population of three million.
Health experts are particularly troubled by the fact that some 15 percent of youths aged between 13 and 15 have reportedly taken up smoking.
Albanians spend more than 300 million euros on tobacco products every year.