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First backtrack article published today
Today La Nacion
MINISTER OF HEALTH SIGNED RELAXES SMOKING BAN REGULATIONS
Government opens gate to smoke in workplaces
Allows smoking in open spaces, employers must identify areas
Maintain ban on advertising on cigarette sales
The government left open a loophole for employers to designate places where workers can smoke.
'A regulation consensual'

This award comes after the Ministry of Health led an intense campaign to get Congress to pass a law antifumado.

After passing the legislative process , on March 26 was published in the Gazette the Control Act of Snuff and its Harmful Effects on Health , which prohibits smoking, among other places, in the workplace. The restriction includes "all attached or associated places and vehicles that workers use in carrying out their work."

But three months later, on June 26, the Health Minister, Daisy Corrales, and the president, Laura Chinchilla, signed a regulation that eases such provision.

This rule allows light cigarettes in workplaces in "open spaces that are within the property at a distance not less than five (5) meters of the production unit of work or its annexes and related places."

The possibility of smoking within five meters of the "productive unit" was never mentioned by the health authorities.

Nor was featured in the draft regulation that Health made ​​available to the public to receive comments .

The regulation does maintain other regulations issued by the smoking ban as the ban on cigarette advertising and the requirement to include information on cigarette packs about the damage caused by nicotine.

It also specifies the process to make complaints and penalties against those who smoke in prohibited places such as bus stops, bars and restaurants.

Calling for change. The National Anti-Tobacco Network announced that it will require health authorities to reform regulation, via executive order to ban all smoking in the work.

"The final rule makes a mockery of public opinion. Many supported the law against smoking, "said David Sancho, coordinator of the network.

Sancho said he also valued sue the state before the Administrative Court for a violation of the Law on Control of Snuff.

In this regard, Deputy Minister of Health, Sisy Castillo, said that the possibility of smoking is only possible in workplaces, for example, large industrial areas and free zones.

For his part, Minister of the Presidency, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, argued yesterday that the regulation conforms "to the letter of the law" and said smoking not know who raised the idea of ​​allowing smoking be allowed at work.

Benavides said to have participated only in a meeting with Health Minister, Daisy Corrales, and his counterpart of Economics, Mayi Antillon, to discuss a transition to give tobacco companies a deadline for them to sell their stocks of packs with less than 20 cigarettes , since the law only allows dispensing antifumado packages with 20 units of snuff.

Health had proposed to give a period of three months and Economy proposed a year. In the end, Benavides said, was included in the regulations a one-year transition after consulting the existing rules on such terms.