SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 5 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Representatives of the Nofumadores association and the Tenerife Neighborhood Alliance have met with the president of CD Tenerife, Paulino Rivero, to convey their proposal that smoking be prohibited in the Heliodoro Rodríguez López stadium.
During the meeting, Rivero advocated that this objective could materialize hand in hand with professionals and organizations that work in the field of health, involving the members and supporters of CD Tenerife in the decision.
The national NGO Nofumadores.org explained to the president the need to declare the stadium and therefore all sporting and cultural events as smoke-free spaces.
From the organization they point out in a note that “in recent times there is an unstoppable trend in the world of football for which healthy lifestyles are being promoted, and the consumption of tobacco is totally opposite to that objective.”
National clubs such as Barcelona, Málaga or Deportivo de la Coruña have already adopted this measure and Valencia will soon adopt it.
Likewise, in the Basque Country all stadiums and sports facilities have been smoke-free spaces since 2016 based on its regional law on addictions.
The NGO also recalls that during the covid pandemic, smoking was already prohibited in all sports stadiums and international organizations such as the ACC, FIFA, UEFA, have already established this rule a long time ago in all their competitions.
To achieve this objective, they ensure that “it is essential” to veto the consumption of tobacco and nicotine in all public sports spaces, among other spaces.
“This measure entails achieving the intergenerational example that should be given to children, adolescents and young people, especially when it is related to the world of sports, a badge and instrument in the search for physical, emotional and mental health. And our representative Club Deportivo Tenerife, is the first that should fulfill this social and moral responsibility, prohibiting smoking in its stadium”, argued Abel Román, spokesman for Nofumadores in the Canary Islands.
According to Román, “ethics in sport is not limited to not exercising physical and verbal violence, but to act in all those cases in which gratuitous and unnecessary suffering is caused, such as damage to health from smoking in the stadium.”
In his opinion, “the impact on the health of a non-smoker breathing in the tobacco smoke of his seat neighbor, who smokes five cigarettes during a game, is equivalent to having smoked one cigarette and there is no right to do that because they get cancer and they die for it, and that suffering is unfair and unnecessary.”
According to the Canary Islands Health Survey (2016), in the archipelago 26.2% of the population over 16 years of age smoke (28.7% of men and 23.7% of women).
In absolute figures there are 252,000 smokers and 214,000 smokers (466,000 in total) for which the representative of Nofumadores.org affirms that “tobacco consumption is the main cause of loss of health in our society.”
