No Smoking In Honduras — Anywhere

Honduras just passed a law that bans smoking pretty much everywhere — even in your own home if someone reports they were bothered by your smoking. The law does not explicitly ban smoking in homes, but yet, there’s a possibility that smokers could be reported by neighbors or family for doing just that.

The law also prohibits smoking closer than 6 feet near nonsmokers in open spaces, and bans smoking in schools, gas stations, nightclubs, restaurants, bars, buses, taxis, stadiums and other places. Advertising for tobacco products is also banned, and photos of cancer-ridden lungs must be placed on cigarette packs. All this in a country where 30% of people smoke.

Penalties for breaking the law range from verbal warnings to $311 for an individual’s transgression to up to $6,000 for repeat offenders. This is a hard core way of dealing with smoking, obviously, costs associated with caring for people who fall ill from the effects of the habit were cited in passing the law. Ultimately, I would suspect that Honduras has lots of other health problems that warrant more attention, perhaps passing this law made the country eligible for some particular form of international aid or something like that.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD

[Photo By Mykl Roventine]

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read