“This can be achieved by banning all non-TPD [Tobacco Products Directive] regulated products containing nicotine or substances with nicotine-like properties as consumer products”, the letter concludes. It calls for products that remain legal to be subject to reduced nicotine levels, flavour bans, standardised packaging and (where relevant) standardised devices.
“We are talking about an EU-wide flavour ban, plain packaging, standardized devices, and aggressive nicotine caps to make existing alternatives as useless and unappealing as humanly possible”, said Thomas Frohnert of Steamshots, a pro-vaping media outlet in Germany.
They want to choke the harm reduction market to death, stop better tech from saving smokers, and leave people with only two options: buy pharma-grade NRTs or smoke combustible cigarettes
Front-running what’s next
Peter Beckett, Co-Founder of Clearing the Air and an EU policy expert based in Brussels, said “this is an age-old tactic from the EU. Get Member States to ask it to do the thing it wants to do anyway, then use that demand as an excuse to do the thing”.
“That’s important here, because the recent consultation on changing the EU’s nicotine laws didn’t include anything on a market freeze, and to get that proposal approved internally without having consulted anyone on it will require political intervention like this”.
The Netherlands, lead signatory on the letter, is home to RIVM, the Dutch public health regulator, which is advising the EU Commission on revising the TPD. The health ministers of Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia and Spain also signed the letter.
Nicotine pouches: a particularly touchy subject
Nicotine pouches are a particularly difficult area. While the Member States in question almost certainly favour an EU-wide ban, this is complicated by the popularity of the products in Sweden, which will almost certainly seek to block any such move.
“Nicotine pouches are highly harmful and addictive, though marketed with unfounded claims related to smoking cessation” the letter argues.
“Furthermore, the marketing tactics employed can encourage dual use, hinder cessation attempts and undermine regulations prohibiting smoking or use of other nicotine-containing
products in public places”. The letter does not explain how the use of nicotine pouches - which are placed under the lip and undetectable to bystanders - undermines smoking or vaping bans.
“Adults who switched to pouches are not using a loophole, we're the evidence that switching works because we live healthier lives now. Ban pouches and people won't quit nicotine. They'll go back to smoking or buy from the black market".
Fanning the populist flame
The two largest signatories to the letter, France and Spain, are facing elections in the next six months: Spain on 29 November and France on 18 April. Populist vote surges in both countries could lead to changes in the composition of governments that would almost certainly change their positions.
In a recent letter to French tobacconists canvassing their support, Marine le Pen, the current frontrunner in the French Presidential elections and leader of the populist-right National Rally party, said: “Regarding vaping, as with all new products, we need stable, clear, and practical regulations. These regulations must not be developed in isolation from the realities on the ground. Tobacconists must be fully involved in decisions that affect their business, their investments, and their future”.
“The French health minister is shooting her government in the foot. Twice,” said co-founder of French vape media outlet Je Suis Vapoteur. “First, because putting a break on innovation in the nicotine industry is counterproductive to public health; and second, because for many smokers and vapers, it will be yet another argument in favor of Marine Le Pen and the far right. There are more than 3 million Vapers in France, and the centre is in a fight for its life”.
Vox, the Spanish populist-right party that is expected to form a government with the centre-right Partido Popular following snap elections on 29th November, has also historically opposed banning safer alternatives to smoking.