Europe’s top rights court on Tuesday, November 4th, said Estonia’s smoking ban in jails violated basic rights and ordered the Baltic nation to pay compensation to three prisoners.
The ruling follows a complaint by four jailed long-term smokers after the Baltic country in 2017 implemented a total smoking ban in prisons.
The European Court of Human Rights said this violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, guaranteeing “the right to respect for private and family life.”
The ECtHR said the decision to smoke was a matter of personal autonomy, with prisoners entitled to make decisions about their lives and health. Inmates retain all fundamental rights under the convention, except for the right to liberty, the Strasbourg-based court said.
“In a context of already limited personal autonomy, the freedom for prisoners to decide—such as whether to smoke—was all the more precious for them,” the court added.
The court criticised Estonian authorities for imposing the ban without assessing the “impact on the personal autonomy of prisoners who smoked.” The inmates had complained about the ban as well as the withdrawal symptoms they experienced as long-time smokers such as weight gain, sleeping problems, depression and anxiety.
“Such a far-reaching and absolute ban had not been justified,” it said, asking Estonia to pay €1,500 to each of the three successful plaintiffs.
The ruling will be welcomed by pro-smoking campaigners, but for critics it will represent yet another example of the supra-national court inventing new “human rights” out of thin air.
