The Council of Ministers is scheduled to approve the draft tobacco law this Tuesday, which expands smoke-free areas and tightens legislation for vapers and other devices. The text promoted by the Ministry of Health will subsequently be sent to the Cortes for parliamentary processing.
Among other new measures, it prohibits smoking by minors (now the sale and supply to them is already banned) and provides for fines starting at 200 euros to be borne by the parents. It is the biggest reform of the state anti-smoking regulations since the 2005 law that banned smoking in bars and restaurants. The draft law was approved by the Government in September 2025 and now returns to the Council of Ministers with its final wording. The reform is part of the development of the Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking 2024-2027.
This development is structured around four pillars: the expansion of smoke-free spaces, restrictions on access and consumption by minors, the equalization of electronic cigarettes with traditional tobacco ones — whether they contain nicotine or not — and the prohibition of all forms of advertising and promotion, including signage in shop windows.
The future regulation expands smoke-free spaces to terraces of bars and restaurants, communal swimming pools, sports facilities, outdoor shows and events, universities, and also commercial vehicles, except when they are used exclusively for private purposes. The text also includes enhanced protection zones around spaces considered sensitive such as educational and health centers.
The law also takes a leap in protecting minors, who once the new regulation is approved will be prohibited from smoking — until now they were only banned from purchasing — and consuming tobacco-related products such as electronic devices and nicotine pouches. The regulation also introduces changes in the sanctioning regime, raising the minimum fines, which will start at 200 euros.
The reform also imposes greater restrictions on the sale and advertising of any tobacco-related product with the aim of ending the current situation, resulting from the lack of regulation, in which vapers and similar products can be purchased in convenience stores and bazaars.
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Health has decided to take this step in view of the consumption data detected. According to ESTUDES 2025, the survey on drug use in secondary education in Spain, the prevalence of daily smokers among people aged 14 to 18 stands at 4.3%, the lowest figure in the entire historical series since 1994. However, tobacco consumption in the last month in this same age group remains high, with a prevalence of 15.5%.
The concern of those responsible is to prevent new presentations of tobacco-related products, apparently more harmless, from becoming a new gateway for young people to nicotine addiction. The lack of specific regulation, which Health now wants to end, has allowed these products to be purchased in multiple establishments. The new regulation, by equating them with traditional tobacco products, limits their sale to specialized stores, such as tobacco shops.
The regulation arriving today at the Council of Ministers prohibits all forms of advertising in public or collective use spaces. This means that there can be no signage, furniture, or objects with promotional or advertising messages in shop windows of stores, bars, and any leisure establishment.
The Government also plans to approve today the draft of the new Medicines Law, which includes as main measures that identical medicines can have different prices and compete with each other in pharmacies, the possibility that nurses and physiotherapists can prescribe medicines within their competencies, and formulas so that innovative medicines can reach public hospitals in an accelerated manner even before Health and pharmaceutical companies have reached an agreement on their price for public healthcare.
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