On 29th of June 2022 the EU commission announced that the EU plan to ban the sale of flavoured heated tobacco products.
The reasoning for this apparently is the old “teen use” bog roll.
Heated tobacco (or Heat Not Burn) is totally different from vaping. It uses actual tobacco you would find in a cigarette but instead of burning it completely it heats it to a level where the nicotine is vaporised.
According to the article on the Politico website the sale of heated tobacco has really taken off in Europe. From 2018 to 2020 sales soared from 924 million to 19.7 Billion sticks stated in a commission report.
I find it slightly odd as they are pretty unpopular in the UK!
EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said…
“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,”
“Stronger actions to reduce tobacco consumption, stricter enforcement and keeping pace with new developments to address the endless flow of new products entering the market — particularly important to protect younger people — is key for this,”
Michael Landl (Director of the World Vapers Alliance) shot back with…
“It is shocking that the EU Commission still fights tobacco harm reduction. To achieve its own 5% tobacco use target, we need as many options as possible. Vaping, nicotine pouches and heat-not-burn products all help people to quit smoking and are less harmful. The Commission systematically ignores the wealth of scientific evidence pointing to the benefits, not to mention the first-hand experience of millions of vapers. The Commission’s negative approach to harm reduction will do nothing but boost the black market and push people back to smoking.”
What Brands Of Heated Tobacco Are Affected?
Some of the main players in the heated tobacco market are the PMI (Phillip Morris International) “IQOS“, the BAT (British American Tobacco) “Glo” and the JTI (Japan Tobacco International) “Ploom” brand.
It is worth noting these are tobacco companies rather than Electronic brands – so it makes sense for them to update how people consume tobacco to stop their market drying out.
From what I can make out this ban only affects flavoured Heat Not Burn “sticks” so I assume regular tobacco ones will be still for sale?
Inaccurate Reporting
Incorrect reporting has caused people to think flavoured vapes are to be banned, some reports have had to correct their articles to add this isn’t the case…
https://news.sky.com/story/flavoured-vapes-could-be-banned-under-eu-plan-to-fight-cancer-12642469 – this was corrected to “Flavoured heated tobacco products could be banned under EU plan to fight cancer”.
https://www.thesun.ie/health/9023523/flavoured-vaping-products-eu-ban-sales-young-people-skyrocket/ – this is from the Irish Sun newspaper website – as you can see the title in the address and on the site references flavoured vaping products! They did add the sentence included below in the write up.
I know HNB is a controversial subject, but at the end of the day if they help people quit smoking they have a place in the market.
But I do wish big Tobacco Companies would divert their interest into nicotine vaping rather than continuing with old fashioned tobacco.
