A group of 23 European experts in tobacco and nicotine science have written to the President of the European Commission, warning that recent statements on vaping and other smoke-free products are “false and misleading”.
In an eight-page letter sent on 25 February, the signatories say they are “deeply concerned by recent claims made by Commissioner Várhelyi that the use of smoke-free products has comparable risks to smoking cigarettes.”
They write: “There is no scientific basis for this claim, and a strong scientific basis to assess smoke-free tobacco and nicotine products as posing only a small fraction of the risk of cigarettes”.
Comments by EU Commissioner
The letter centres on comments made by Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi in an interview with Euractiv.
When asked whether alternative tobacco products are as harmful as traditional cigarettes, the Commissioner replied: “Yes, I am. Absolutely. One hundred per cent.” Pressed further, he added: “As harmful. I know they do not like this, but I am absolutely sure.”
The experts describe these remarks as part of “a pattern of misinformation and false statements from the Commissioner”.
They also cite previous comments, including a statement to the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee in May 2025 that “vaping.. has created completely new health risks [that are] comparable to or even bigger than smoking itself.
“It’s enough to read some articles about the ‘popcorn lungs’ which is a completely new phenomenon, and which is breathtakingly overtaking the young generation”
In their response, the signatories state: “The risks are not comparable, and there are no known cases of popcorn lung (bronchiolitis obliterans) caused by vaping.”
They further criticise a January 2026 Commission answer to a parliamentary question, which asserted: “Using smoke-free tobacco and nicotine products, as opposed to combustible smoking, is not reducing risk to health”.
The experts argue this position is based on a logical error, adding: “There is an important difference between safe and safer: smoke-free products do not have to be ‘safe’ to be far ‘safer’ than cigarettes.”
“Far less harmful than cigarettes”
The letter sets out what the authors describe as the scientific consensus on relative risk.
“There is no serious dispute that vaping, pouches, and other forms of non-combustible tobacco and nicotine products are far less harmful than smoking,” they write.
They point to the key distinction between combustible and non-combustible products, saying: “The key difference between combustible and non-combustible products is the formation of thousands of combustion byproducts.”
The letter notes that “Tobacco smoke contains around 7,000 identifiable chemical agents, of which at least 158 are known to be toxic or carcinogenic”, and adds that measures of toxicant exposure among people using smoke-free products are “much lower compared to those of people who smoke, close to background, or undetectable to people”.
The authors stress: “We do not claim that these products are ‘safe’ or ‘harmless’, just that they are, beyond any reasonable doubt, far less harmful than cigarettes.”
They also highlight the well-known observation by Professor Michael Russell that “People smoke for the nicotine but die from the tar”.
Public health and policy implications
The experts warn that misrepresenting relative risk has real-world consequences.
“Given that smoking kills around 700,000 European Union citizens annually, this misrepresentation of risks has multiple negative consequences for public health and European Union policymaking,” they write in the covering email.
In the main letter, they describe the errors as “non-trivial”, adding that they relate to “a major public health issue: around 90 million EU citizens still smoke (almost one in four adults), and over 700,000 Europeans die prematurely each year from smoking-related disease”.
They argue that misleading statements could distort revisions to the Tobacco Excise Directive and the Tobacco Products Directive, undermine Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and the EU cardiovascular health plan, and damage the functioning of the internal market.
The letter concludes with a direct appeal to Commission leadership. It says: “The Commission leadership, or other institutions, must move swiftly to correct dangerous, false, and misleading statements made by Commissioner Várhelyi and to ensure that policymaking with the potential to save or threaten the lives of millions of EU citizens is grounded in sound science.”
It adds: “Fundamentally, the European institutions can back the Commissioner’s posture, or they can take their policymaking responsibilities seriously. They cannot do both.”
