Cracks have appeared in the EU’s approach to nicotine science as the EU Commission’s top public health official, Sandra Gallina, publicly contradicted her boss and Health Commissioner Oliver Varheyli on the relative risks of nicotine products.
Gallina, whose official title is “Director General for Health and Consumers”, said in a letter to a group of consumer bodies led by Dutch vaping association ACVODA that nicotine products carry “varying degrees” of risk to health. In contrast, her political master Varheyli has claimed on numerous occasions that all nicotine products are just as harmful as cigarettes.
The split is significant as the EU Commission gears up to propose changes to laws regulating all nicotine products next year, likely to include widespread bans and restrictions that will leave millions of vapers and pouch users unable to access the products they use legally.
A fatally flawed consultation
The letter was revealed by ACVODA as part of a complaint to the European Ombudsman claiming that a survey the Commission is undertaking ahead of proposing the new law is biased and impossible for vapers and pouch users to answer.
“The survey does not seem intended to truly listen to people who smoke, vape, use snus, or pouches”, ACVODA claims on its website. “We believe it was primarily designed to suggest support for a strict, prohibition-oriented policy, while the millions of Europeans who use these products and are most affected by them are barely given a voice”.
The complaint centres on three problems with the survey: that it groups all people aged 10-24 as “young people” despite this including both pre-teens and legal adults; that it repeatedly presents all nicotine products as a single regulatory category in questions about bans and restrictive measures; and that it is based on leading questions and response formats.
Tacit admission of guilt
While Gallina seeks to defend the Commission’s survey, her letter appears to confirm that its alleged defects are deliberate.
Most strikingly, Gallina claims that the survey “is not intended to establish a ranking or comparative assessment of the relative harm of different product categories” and is instead designed to “to gather stakeholder views on the regulatory framework, which include questions by product type, rather than to differentiate between levels of risk at this stage”.
As ACVODA and colleagues point out in their response, [a]n instrument that by design does not differentiate between products of materially different established risk cannot generate objective evidence about the appropriate regulation of those products”. Gallina’s position “defends the choice as policy; it does not answer the methodological objection”.
Ombudsman to determine maladministration
It will now be for the Ombudsman, which resolves citizens complaints about the EU institutions, to decide whether Gallina and DG SANTE are guilty of maladministration because of its survey.
While the Ombudsman isn’t able to require the Commission to redo the survey, a negative finding would represent a blow to Varheyli and Gallina, who appear to remain committed to further bans or restrictions “come what may”.
Alongside ACVODA, the complainants included French vapers association AIDUCE, Italy-based Heated Community Hub, ANESVAP of Spain, ACPAN of Romania and EU4Snus of Sweden.
