For a smoker in Ungheni, the change coming on 24 June is not visible on the street but in the most ordinary places of the day: the stairwell, the bus stop, the balcony at home. From that date a national law takes effect that sharply widens the map of places where smoking is banned and raises the fines — up to 2,250 lei for a person and up to 15,000 for a company.
The act in question is Law no. 125 of 29 May 2025, which amends the 2007 tobacco-control law and the Contravention Code. It was published in the Official Gazette on 24 June 2025, and the law delays its own effect by a year: hence the date of 24 June 2026. Ungheni City Hall announced it on 18 June, with a list of bans and fines.
What changes, exactly
Until now, smoking was banned mainly in enclosed public spaces. The new law carries the ban outdoors and into the common areas of apartment blocks. Concretely, from 24 June you may no longer smoke:
- on children’s playgrounds and sports grounds, in amusement and water parks, at swimming pools and on beaches;
- in stadiums, arenas and markets during public events;
- at public-transport stops and in pedestrian underpasses;
- on public transport — and in private vehicles carrying minors;
- in the stairs, corridors and lift cabins of apartment blocks, in the other common areas, and on the balconies of flats and dormitories.
To this is added a rule that will be hard to ignore in the town centre: smoking is banned within 10 metres of the entrance to public buildings, near open windows and ventilation systems. The distance is measured in a straight line, regardless of any fence or other obstacle between the smoker and the door.
Not just cigarettes
A detail the City Hall notice does not mention, but which is in the law: the bans do not concern only ordinary cigarettes. The ban also covers e-cigarettes, heated-tobacco devices and the hookah, and the sale of nicotine pouches becomes punishable in turn. In short, “it makes no smoke, so I can” will not be a valid excuse.
What a wrongly lit cigarette costs
The law also tightens the fines in the Contravention Code. The ceilings confirmed in the text are clear: an individual caught smoking in a banned place risks up to 2,250 lei or 40–60 hours of community service, and a legal entity — up to 15,000 lei, with the loss of the right to carry out a given activity for up to a year.
According to Ungheni City Hall, fines for individuals start at 1,750 lei, rise to 3,900–4,500 lei for smoking on public transport, and reach 10,500–12,000 lei for venue managers who allow smoking in premises or institutions.
Who issues the fine? Not sanitary inspectors, but the police: the reports are drawn up by establishing officers of the internal-affairs bodies. How often that will happen is another matter. Over one year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported, across the whole country, only 80 proceedings for smoking in banned places and 147 for smoking on transport. Applied to balconies and stairwells, the rule will in practice depend on neighbours’ complaints.
The numbers behind it
The law does not arrive on empty ground. According to the 2021 STEPS survey, almost one adult in three in the Republic of Moldova — 29.9% of those aged 18–69 — smokes; among men the rate is over half (52%). ANSP estimates around 6,000 deaths a year in Moldova linked to tobacco use or exposure.
The huge figures cited by the City Hall — over 7 million deaths a year, of which 1.6 million from second-hand smoke — are World Health Organization estimates worldwide, not for Ungheni or Moldova. They show how heavily tobacco weighs on the world; the local picture is given by the figures above.
Where will people still be allowed to smoke?
It is the question that drew the most comments under the City Hall’s announcement. If you may not smoke on your own balcony, nor in front of the block, nor at the stop — then where? For now, the answer is a promise:
In the coming days, Ungheni City Hall will provide further information about smoking spots.
Ungheni City Hall
Until that list appears, Ungheni residents are left with a clear law on the bans and a gap on the alternatives. As of 19 June, Triunghi.md had not found such a list published.