EU to ban flavored tobacco products in e-cigarettes

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EU to ban flavored tobacco products in e-cigarettes

The European Council and European Parliament are reviewing the move, which is part of a larger campaign to phase out tobacco use by the year 2040.

The European Union proposed a ban on the sale of flavored heated tobacco products that are widely used in e-cigarettes or vapes, part of a larger campaign to ban tobacco use and reduce cancer rates in the bloc. The proposal, spurred by a surge in the sale of e-cigarettes, seeks to keep pace with new products entering the market and to protect younger people, said Stella Kyriakides, health commissioner for the bloc's executive arm. With nine out of 10 lung cancers caused by tobacco, we want to make smoking as unattractive as possible to protect the health of our citizens and save lives, said Ms. Kyriakides, who said her agency's mission was to reduce tobacco use to 5 percent in member states by 2040.

In Europe, sales of e-cigarette products have risen by more than 2,000 percent between 2018 and 2020, according to an E.U. The report of the Commission was released in June. The report said that the products now exceed 2.5 percent of the total sale of tobacco products in the region.

The ban would cover only products that contain heated tobacco, not those with nicotine alone. The proposal comes amid greater scrutiny in Europe and the United States over the health effects of heated tobacco products and flavored nicotine products in vapes. The plan must be approved by the European Council and European lawmakers and member states will have several months to put a ban in place. Some public health bodies have suggested that heated tobacco products are less harmful than conventional cigarettes. According to a 2020 study by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, heated tobacco was associated with 10 to 25 times lower exposure to a number of carcinogens, which could mean a significantly reduced relative risk compared to normal cigarettes. In 2018, a parliamentary committee in the U.K. published a report that said that heated tobacco was likely less harmful than conventional cigarettes. If the bloc wanted to achieve its goal on tobacco use, alternatives to smoking needed to exist, according to Dustin Dahlmann, president of the Independent European Vaping Alliance. Flavored products, he said, would attract smokers wanting to quit.

The World Health Organization has called the use of nicotine through vaping harmful, but said it was too soon to determine the long-term effects of their exposure. The organization said that nicotine consumption in children and adolescents has had a negative impact on brain development, and could potentially lead to learning and anxiety disorders. The Netherlands said last year it planned to ban flavored products in e-cigarettes beginning in 2023 to discourage children and young people from using them, but keep tobacco flavors for people using them to quit smoking. British American Tobacco, the largest tobacco company in the world based on net sales, was not immediately available for comment on the E.U. A U.S. court granted Juul, a vaping brand that is popular with teenagers, a temporary reprieve from being allowed to keep e-cigarettes on the market, following a decision by the Food and Drug Administration.