Euro Bureaucrats Will Spur Smoking

• The EU’s Beating Cancer Plan is unlikely to meet its aim of reducing cancer
• Onerous restrictions on novel nicotine products could force millions back to smoking
• The plan calls for flavour bans, public space use bans, plain packaging and high taxation on vapes and other safer nicotine products.
• In some European countries, smoking rates are already increasing

The EU’s flagship Beating Cancer Plan will be a major topic of conversation at the Global Forum on Nicotine conference in Warsaw this week. Experts will tell delegates that when the new European Parliament convenes later this year, product bans, excessive taxation and plain packaging will all be on the table – not just for cigarettes but also for vapes and other safer nicotine products.

“It's hard to tell if the EU is serious about beating cancer.  If it is, it needs to get really serious about beating smoking” according to tobacco policy expert Clive Bates. “That means using every possible means to help people quit smoking, including vapes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco and snus. The EU institutions waste far too much energy trying to block people from using these products to quit.”

Dr Colin Mendelsohn, Founding Chairman of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association charity, added: “Europe could end up like Australia where, perversely, you can only buy tobacco legally if it’s for smoking. E-cigarettes are so hard to get that they might as well be banned.”

In the US, the situation is just as dire, with regulations so onerous that legal options just can’t compete with the black market.

“Safer alternatives to smoking like vapes and nicotine pouches need to be affordable and easy to access. The experience of other countries is that these products can dramatically reduce smoking rates and the risk of cancer,” according to Mendelsohn.

In Sweden, where smokers have switched to snus, smoking went down three times faster than in the rest of the EU.  And in New Zealand and Japan, smoking rates dropped by a half and a third, respectively, after the introduction of heated tobacco products. 

The European Commission’s goal is to reduce tobacco use to under 5% by 2040.  But progress is slow. Smoking rates have dropped by just six percentage points between 2006 and 2020. And in some countries, like Slovenia, smoking rates have gone up (see Figure 1 in attachment).

“Making it harder to give up smoking by pricing people out or making alternative products so unattractive that nobody wants to use them, is not the answer,” said Dr Garett McGovern, Medical Director at the Priority Medical Clinic in Dublin, Ireland.

Clive Bates concluded: “EU bureaucrats should recognise that novel products represent an opportunity, not a threat, but unfortunately, they seem enthralled by advocacy groups that hate innovation and resist change.”

References:

• The Global Forum on Nicotine - https://gfn.events/

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.