Now, those in Milan can only smoke in isolated spaces, with a distance of 10 meters from the nearest person. Anyone who doesn’t comply pays a fine.
The city of Milan has banned, from this first day of 2025, smoking in open-air public spaces, only allowing smoking in isolated places where it is possible to maintain a distance of ten meters from the nearest person.
According to the “decree on air quality” adopted by Milan in 2020, “from January 1, 2025, the smoking ban will be extended to all public spaces, including streets“, writes the French news agency, France-Presse (AFP), highlighting that the law allows exceptions.
Thus, it will be possible to smoke in “isolated places where it is possible to maintain a distance of at least ten meters from other people”, and Electronic cigarettes are not affected by this measurewhich provides fines between 40 and 240 euros.
The vice-president of the Italian Tobacco Federation, Emanuele Marinoni, himself the owner of a tobacconist in Milan, he expects a drop in sales of 20 to 30%: “Currently, when people are in the office, they go out to smoke, so it is obvious that there will be a drop in cigarette consumption,” he told AFP.
The city of Milan, surrounded by a dense industrial fabric and which regularly records pollution levels of fine particles of nitrogen oxides above standards, is particularly aware of the need to combat air pollution, especially in view of 2026 Winter Olympicswhich hosts in partnership with the Cortina resort.
Italy began its anti-smoking campaign in 1975 with a limited ban on public transport; then, in 1995, it was extended to public administrations and, in 2005, to all closed public places.
Almost one Italian in five smokesaccording to 2023 data from the National Statistics Institute, and 93,000 deaths per year are attributed to smoking, according to the Ministry of Health.
By way of comparison, almost three French people in every ten smoke, compared to 8% in Sweden and 37% in Bulgariarespectively the best and worst performance in the European Union, where the average percentage of smokers is 24%.
