{"id":32567,"date":"2025-12-19T09:10:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T09:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/?p=32567"},"modified":"2025-12-19T09:10:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T09:10:42","slug":"factually-wrong-experts-destroy-study-used-by-eu-commission-to-justify-nicotine-clampdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/factually-wrong-experts-destroy-study-used-by-eu-commission-to-justify-nicotine-clampdown\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFactually wrong\u201d: experts destroy study used by EU Commission to justify nicotine clampdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An academic article used by EU Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi to justify his assertion that safer nicotine products are as dangerous as smoking has been taken apart by a leading tobacco and nicotine expert.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my view this is not a scientific review, but an effort to persuade European regulators to clamp down on any nicotine products like vapes and pouches that do not have pharmaceutical licensing\u201d, Hajek said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe main glaring problem is that the authors fail to acknowledge the extensive and clear evidence that vapes and pouches are far less harmful than smoking\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Peter Hajek is the director of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine’s Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London and is among the most prominent tobacco dependence researchers globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe article and the press release give the impression that vaping or pouches pose the same risks to the heart and blood vessels as smoking. This is not true\u201d, Hajek continued. \u201c Without everything else you get from burning tobacco, nicotine poses only a small fraction of the risks of smoking to the heart and blood vessels.  Switching from smoking to \u2018snus\u2019, Swedish oral tobacco that delivers more nicotine than cigarettes, practically eliminates smoking-related risks of heart attacks and atherosclerosis\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astonishingly, the main source used by the authors of the paper to substantiate their call for widespread bans on safer nicotine products actually concludes the opposite.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe section titled \u2018Nicotine as a cardiovascular toxin regardless of delivery method\u2019<\/em> even gives as its main source a high quality scientific review of cardiovascular effects of nicotine that came to the opposite conclusion: that \u2018risks of nicotine without tobacco combustion products are low compared cigarette smoking\u2019<\/em> and that \u2018electronic cigarettes appear to pose low-cardiovascular risk\u2019, <\/em>Hajek explained. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe article and the press release make other claims that contradict evidence, e.g. that vaping is a gateway into cigarette smoking (when in fact vaping is replacing<\/em> smoking), that vapes do not help smokers quit (they do), that there is a growing vaping epidemic among youth in the US (vaping in youth declined substantially since 2019).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSwitching from smoking to vaping or pouch use can help smokers to avoid not only heart disease, but also lung disease and cancer. My concern is that if smokers get the false impression that smoking\/vaping\/pouches all pose the same risks, it will further discourage them from making the switch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An academic article used by EU Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi to justify his assertion that safer nicotine products are as dangerous as smoking has been taken apart by a leading tobacco and nicotine expert. \u201cIn my view this is not a scientific review,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990003,"featured_media":32568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257,259],"tags":[27,186],"slider":[],"class_list":["post-32567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-science","tag-article","tag-nicotine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/990003"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32575,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32567\/revisions\/32575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32567"},{"taxonomy":"slider","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/slider?post=32567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}