Uruguay: the first smoke-free country in South America

<<previous

next>>

Starting March 1st Uruguay has become the first smoke-free country in South America. From now on smoking is prohibited in public places and smokers can't speak about anything else. They are all really mad because the ban came so abruptly. It just suddenly happened one day with almost no campaigns or psychological treatment.

I don't smoke and I personally like the idea of not having to tolerate the smoke at restaurants and certain other places but I think this should have been done gradually and not like the way it was carried out. Starting yesterday inspectors ran to the streets to make sure that the law is being respected everywhere. When it is not, violators will have to pay a fine of about 1000 American Dollars (that's a lot here in Uruguay).

The campaign started the same day of the banning with "no smoking" signs being posted everywhere. I am showing a couple of signs here, because I think that some of the ideas in the pictures are really good, it would have been better if they were up a couple of months earlier though. I could only find these around my place but I may post more in the future so come back if you are interested. I don't think the translation is necessary because the images speak by themselves. The main sign in the one with the baby says (don't make me smoke, smoke noun).





I should also mention in case you don't know, that our president Tabaré Vázquez is an oncologist and he is really worried about us Uruguayans dying of lung cancer. This is most likely the reason why we are the first country in Latin America to adopt the non-smoking status. There are around one million smokers in Uruguay (the total population is about 3 and a half millions). This is going to be really tough.