The senator and leader of the Cabildo Abierto (CA) party, Guido Manini Riosstated that the decree of President Luis Lacalle Pou, which made the packaging of tobacco packs more flexible (allowing cheaper soft boxes and the presence of designer logos), is “an inopportune decree” because “if the spirit is merely one of control of smuggling, he could have waited another month for the decree.”
“If we agree on something in Cabildo Abierto, it is that anti-smoking policies were one of the best things that were done in the administrations of the Front,” said the legislator, who belongs to the same space from which the current Minister of Public Health, Daniel Salinas, came out. .
Manini Ríos clarified that Minister Salinas “does not plan any (additional) change in anti-smoking policies”, beyond what is contemplated in the Lacalle decree.
He didn’t even sign the decree
At the beginning of the week, Manini Ríos had publicly declared that the MSP minister “didn’t even sign” the decree.
«It is a decree that originates in the Ministry of Industry for an issue more than anything economic, commercial and smuggling, etc. It does not originate in the Ministry of Public Health », he expressed in dialogue with radio Monte Carlo.
He hastened to say that, for him, the controversy of this whole matter “should not affect in the least” Salinas’s intentions to be elected as president of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
