Huaxin News-European Wave News, February 17 (Madrid Liu Chuanyi) Due to suspicion that cigarette vending machines in restaurants, bars and other places may involve illegal and fraudulent activities, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior has deployed more than 200 National Guards to inspect cigarette vending machines in catering venues.
The purpose is to prevent the catering and bar industries from selling smuggled cigarettes and selling tobacco to minors. The police will conduct the following checks on these places: whether the venue has a tobacco sales license; whether the cigarettes sold are legal; whether the vending machines have remote control devices to prevent minors from buying cigarettes, etc.
The reason for sending a large number of security personnel to carry out the inspection is that the Spanish security department has recently reduced its crackdown on smuggled cigarettes due to staff shortages and other reasons. At the same time, the number of underage smokers is increasing, and more illegal sales of cigarettes have been discovered.
The Ministry of the Interior's major review has caused great dissatisfaction among the Spanish Association of Sales and Recharge Points (AEPVR), which has 40,000 members. AEPVR has written to the Director General of the Civil Guard, Ms. María Gámez (the Director General is the highest civilian officer of the Civil Guard under the Ministry of the Interior), to express AEPVR's opposition.
"This is an action we do not understand. We do not understand why the National Guard is being used to carry out an administrative task. In recent months we have received a particularly large number of complaints because the National Guard in uniform has been present in our restaurants for a long time, creating a regrettable image and making customers think we have committed some great crime."
According to regulations, cigarettes purchased from tobacco shops must be put on sale within 15 days at most. Some bar owners complained that "we saw two or three uniformed guards counting the number of cigarettes in bars, newsstands or gas station stores. Checking whether these cigarettes were purchased in the past 15 days, such scrutiny is ridiculous."
However, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Guard believe that they are not wrong. A letter signed by the head of the National Guard's financial and border teams responded to the complaints of the Association of Sales and Recharge Points AEPVR, saying that "the inspections carried out by the Guard are based on various regulations," including citing the 2005 Anti-Tobacco Law.
The National Guard also said that they found many violations, so they banned some vending machines and imposed penalties on some places. This also caused more dissatisfaction from the AEPVR. The AEPVR believed that the ridiculous review of the Guard not only imposed severe sanctions on catering operators, but also on the tobacco industry.
(European Wave news information comes from the official Spanish government, EFE, and local mainstream media such as El Mundo and El País)
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