Tobacco Directive: Parliament approves new anti-tobacco laws

Plenary session passes the text for making it less attractive, especially for young people. Among key points, warnings on 65 percent of packs surface, regulation for e-cigarettes, flavours banned. Borg “Today is a great day for EU health policy.”

Formal approval by the plenary session of the European Parliament to the new Tobacco Products Directive, which will be amend the existing law in force, aiming at making tobacco products less attractive, especially for young people. The draft legislation was approved by 514 votes to 66, with 58 abstentions, and comes after years of negotiations and oppositions, which have in part weakened the turn of the screw initially conceived by the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Commitee of the Parliament. The draft approved is the same already informally agreed among Member States of the European Union (particularly hard to reach especially for e-cigarettes).

Among the measures approved by MEPs, the most visible one is a largest mandatory picture on packs: current legislation requires that health warnings cover at least 30 percent of the area of the front of the pack and 40 percent of the back. The proposed text would increase this to 65 percent, front and back, and would require these warnings to be in picture form, something that does not happen in most of Member States at the moment. Packs of fewer than 20 cigarettes would be banned in the handful of countries where they are still allowed on the market, given that they are cheaper and hence more accessible to children.

The new Directive introduces a regulation on e-cigarettes: they can be traded as medicinal products, if they are marketed as a quitting aid, or alternatively as tobacco products (regulated by the applicable law). In the latter case, their nicotine concentration should not exceed 20 mg/ml. Refillable e-cigarettes would be allowed. Electronic cigarettes should be childproof and should carry health warnings. They would be subject to the same advertising restrictions as tobacco products.

The text would ban flavourings in cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco: no “candy-cigarettes”, with a “characterising flavour” that could be too attractive for children. Tobacco, according to the text, must smell of tobacco. Menthol would be banned too, yet from 2020. Flavours would be allowed for water pipe tobacco.

Certain additives which are particularly damaging to health would be banned, and regulators would have new powers to require the tobacco industry to carry out extra studies on a “priority list” list of additives, to be set out.  Additives essential to produce tobacco, such as sugar, would be authorised: an essential point for tobacco industries, that said processing some kind of tobacco, such as Burley, would have been impossible without these additives.

The current directive entered into force 12 years ago, and smoking remains the principal preventable cause of death in the European Union and about 700,000 people die of it each year, according to the European Commission and Parliament: “over the years, measures taken to discourage smoking have helped to reduce the proportion of EU citizens who smoke from 40 percent in the EU15 in 2002 to 28 percent in the EU27 in 2012.”

“The new measures are a big step forward for tobacco control, and will help to prevent the next generation of smokers from being recruited,” said rapporteur Linda McAvan (S&D), reminding that “This is the culmination of years of work against the background of intense lobbying from the tobacco industry and its front groups.” McAvan said “We know that it is children – not adults – who start to smoke: the overwhelming majority of smokers start before their 18th birthday.”
“I welcome the Parliament’s positive vote on the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive,” said Commissioner Borg, “today is a great day for EU health policy,” he added, reminding 14 fewer years of life on average for smokers, more years spent in poor health.
The text is to be approved by the Council of Ministers on 14 March. Member states would have to put the provisions on tobacco products into effect within two years of the updated directive’s date of entry into force.

Letizia Pascale