By accelerating the introduction of less harmful alternatives into the market, Europe will be able to phase out cigarettes quicker than the combustion engine, a senior expert from tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) told EURACTIV.
Speaking on the sidelines of an event in Brussels, Grégoire Verdeaux, senior vice president of External Affairs at PMI, said cigarettes could go away “quietly” and “quickly”.
“It depends on whether you make these resolute efforts to really step down and accelerate the injection of less harmful alternatives. And if that brings you under 10% smoking prevalence, you can have a plan where the combustible products are retired before the combustion engine,” he said.
Verdeaux explained that the EU had already done it for other things, such as setting the end of a combustion engine by 2035 or the eco-design directive, after which whole categories of products have been retired from the market.
The tobacco industry emphasises that novel tobacco and nicotine alternatives are less harmful than traditional cigarettes. On the other hand, the European Commission, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and anti-tobacco advocates insist that “less harm is still harm”.
Referring to Europe’s plans to increase taxation on novel tobacco and nicotine alternatives, Verdeaux said this would inevitably result in consumers switching to black markets.
For its side, the EU Commission focuses on the so-called “precautionary principle”, which implies that a policy should be dropped if it may cause harm, and its safety cannot be supported by sufficient scientific evidence; in essence, treating novel tobacco and nicotine products as harmful until proven otherwise.
In line with the WHO, EU policymakers also claim that taxation effectively decreases smoking.
Europe aims to create a tobacco-free generation in Europe, where less than 5% of people use tobacco by 2040.
Stockholm declared in early December that the current level of smoking in Sweden has fallen to 5.6%. Many attribute this to snus, a moist oral tobacco snuff has been banned in the EU since 1992.
“There are no ‘buts’ or nuances in the underlying causes: The reason for this is snus, and only snus,” Swedish MEP Sara Skyttedal (EPP) told EURACTIV, adding that this has also led to reduced tobacco-related mortality.
But Italian MEP Alessandra Moretti (S&D) opposed this view, saying it risks “misinformation”.
“Snus probably does not cause lung cancer but is related to many other diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and other cancers of the digestive system,” she told EURACTIV Italy.
“To decrease the number of smokers, we must not condemn them to another addiction,” she added.
(EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
