Smoking ban challenged

The Romanian Minister of Health, Vlad Voiculescu, has said that social democrat MPs are trying to reverse the provisions of an anti-tobacco law that ban smoking in enclosed public places, according to a story in the Business Review.

Voiculescu wrote on his Facebook page that the MPs would try to get approval from the Committee for Human Rights for the removal of the smoking-ban provisions.

He said also that the parliament’s Health Committee, which is led by social democrats, had proposed amendments to the bill that was signed into law this spring.

“The Senate has tacitly approved the law so that smoking would be possible, practically, in any enclosed space,” Voiculescu wrote.

The Chamber of Deputies will have the final say on the proposed changes to the law.

“The current form of the anti-smoking law is just one of the points that deserves to be defended by the whole society, against the interests of the tobacco industry and of the interests of some members of the parliament,” said Voiculescu.