A smoking ban has been in place in Bulgaria for cafes and restaurants, night clubs and office space for over four years. Smoking is prohibited at stadiums, playgrounds, open air cinemas and theatres, school yards, as well as during events involving children and students.

Anyone lighting a cigarette inside public indoor spaces shall be fined EUR 150-250; in the event of a repeat offence, the penalty is doubled. The proprietor of any public establishment has a joint and several liability for such an offence, if he or she has given his consent. At the beginning of the year, MPs from the nationalist Ataka party demanded that the ban on smoking in public places be lifted, citing as their motive the fact that no less than 30,000 people have been fired because of the full smoking ban and that the result is a more than BGN 300 million drop in the statement of revenue of the budget. Nonetheless, the Health Ministry and doctors’ organizations took a stand against lifting the ban, stating that protecting the health of the nation is a top priority for the government.

Representatives of NGOs recently made public their own findings – that the smoking ban in closed public premises in Bulgaria is being violated and proposed higher penalties for offenders. For the time being, there is no debate on whether to raise sanctions against smokers, but the country will probably join the World Health Organization’s framework convention on tobacco control.

Dr. Albena Nikolova is frequently confronted with the harmful effect of tobacco on human health. Dr. Nikolova, who is a cardiologist says the restrictions as well as awareness campaigns are a must as a way to prevent bad habits.

“It is not just the nicotine, tobacco smoke has more than 20,000 toxic components which are harmful to varying degrees. It has been proved, over and over again, that smoking inflicts damage to the heart and may trigger different kinds of cancer. It is not a matter of restricting people’s freedom to smoke, or of raising obstacles to businesses, the only thing that matters here is to protect human health, that is why the indoor public places smoking ban must be observed.”

Now that smokers are accustomed to the fact that cafes and restaurants are no-smoking zones, the state is putting in place a new measure. It is targeted against harmful food, containing excessive amounts of salt, sugar, bad fats and different enhancers. According to dietitian Prof. Dr. Donka Baykova, the measure aims to protect the health of children and teenagers by taking junk food out of school canteens and catering establishments.

“In 2009 we, experts put together an ordinance on a healthy diet for children and school-goers. It included bans on the sale of unhealthy food and drinks to children and teenagers aged 7 to 19. Under this ordinance, the canteens where children buy food must only sell healthy food. For example, sandwiches with full-grain bread and one protein supplement like pure meat, sirloin, fish, boiled eggs etc. The ordinance placed a prohibition on the sale of waffles, cakes, snack bars and fizzy drinks containing sugar and colouring agents. Conditions were in place for the sale of seasonal fruit and vegetables, like oranges, carrots, bananas, apples. Alas, this came to nothing down the line. First, it was the parents that did not give us their support. If the junk food was not there to be had at schools, they just slipped it into their children’s bags. Canteens simply waited for the inspections to be over, and again stocked junk food. That was how business interests came to prevail over health interests. We conducted a survey regarding public health and ascertained there was a rise in obesity, in type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol levels and other ailments among children. All this goes to show that the government must come up with a different approach to prevention. The proposal to levy an additional tax on the sale of harmful food came as a reaction, after the medical recommendations were simply ignored. What this idea boils down to is to force manufacturers to reconsider their ingredients and to eliminate bad quality high-risk components,” says Prof. Baykova.

English Milena Daynova