Health
Plans to ban smoking in cars overturned
Plans to ban smoking in cars have been scrapped. photo
© Sven Hoppe/dpa
The traffic light overturns the plans to ban smoking in cars. The federal government’s drug commissioner criticizes the decision.
The traffic light coalition is abandoning the smoking ban planned by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD). Cars in the presence of children and pregnant women. The FDP also criticized the plans.
The federal government’s drug commissioner, Burkhard Blienert (SPD), told the editorial network Germany that unfortunately Lauterbach’s important initiative only made it into the draft bill for the cannabis legalization law for a few weeks. “I really cannot understand the FDP’s concerns that such a measure would be an excessive curtailment of civil liberties,” he said. It’s about children’s rights. The pollutant concentration when smoking in the car is as high as in a smoking bar.
At the beginning of July it became known that Lauterbach was planning to ban smoking in vehicles if minors or pregnant women were on board. Various studies have shown that smoke pollution in cars is extremely high due to the small volume of space, said the justification for the change that Lauterbach had inserted in the draft bill for cannabis legalization: “By extending the smoking ban to closed vehicles in the presence of minors and Pregnant women are guaranteed the necessary protection against passive smoking for this particularly vulnerable group of people.”
However, the smoking ban was missing from the version of the bill passed by the Federal Cabinet in mid-August.