European policy on combating nicotine addiction

Interestingly, in recent months they have mainly concerned only one product category, namely disposable e-cigarettes. As if the challenge related to the constantly growing number of smokers of traditional cigarettes did not exist. Perhaps the implementation of the tobacco directive has lulled politicians into a bit of a frenzy and given them a sense of solving the problem. A very illusory sense.

It is no different in Poland.

In a country where one third of Poles smoke compulsively, since the autumn the Ministry of Health has declared the introduction of a ban on the sale of disposable cigarettes as one of its flagship actions, pushing into the background the need to develop a comprehensive nicotine addiction treatment programme.

An inconvenient report

It is June 24, the special edition of the Eurobarometer survey “Attitudes of Europeans towards tobacco and related products” is being published. A total of 26,358 interviews were collected, including 1,026 in Poland, and the survey was conducted between May 10 and June 5, 2023. Should such a huge amount of data and information have gone unnoticed? Probably not, but it did. And here the question arises, did the Commission make a mistake, or was it a deliberate action?

Where does this assumption come from? Maybe because it undermines many of the assumptions made by the European Commission in its actions to reduce the use of nicotine products and ruthlessly exposes their ineffectiveness.

Interestingly, three days before the report was published, on 21 June, European health ministers were debating tobacco and nicotine policy and calling for greater restrictions on alternative nicotine products. The Commission could have published the report before the Council debate. If the report, which runs to hundreds of pages, was ready by Monday morning, it would certainly have been ready by Friday afternoon. But then the debate would have to reflect its findings.

And these are not encouraging. It turns out that since 2020, when the last version of the report was published, the prevalence of smoking tobacco and related products in the 27-member bloc has fallen only by, mind you, a whole 1 percentage point (from 25 to 24 percent). However, since the current European set of regulations on nicotine and tobacco products came into force, it has fallen by 3 percentage points.

What does this mean? The EU’s goal of making Europe smoke-free by 2040 is now pure fantasy.

What instead of prohibitions?

Although the European Union is overwhelmed by the fight against tobacco and nicotine addiction, it is not willing to use the experience of several countries that are already beginning to achieve their first successes in this field. An example is the Czech Republic, which has created a comprehensive policy to combat tobacco addiction based on harm reduction. In April 2023, the government of the Czech Republic approved the “Action Plan for Anti-Addiction Policy for 2023-2025”, which is based on increasing expenditure for this purpose and controlled consumption and harm reduction programs for all types of addictions. In this respect, Sweden can boast the best effects, where radical restrictions have been introduced in relation to traditional cigarettes, but nicotine products such as e-cigarettes and snus have been treated liberally. The result? Sweden is already one step away from becoming a smoke-free society, where the number of smokers does not exceed 5%.

This approach, although it may seem quite subversive at first glance, is justified by numerous studies and, as exemplified by Sweden and the Czech Republic, seems to be more effective than radical bans.

What is the attitude of Poles towards tobacco and related products?

According to the Eurobarometer survey – “Attitudes of Europeans towards tobacco and related products”, Poles smoke more often than the European Union average (27% vs. 24%), which unfortunately probably does not surprise anyone anymore. In our country, men are more likely to smoke than women. They are also people who have more difficulty paying bills. Moreover, Poles use ready-made cigarettes more often than in the EU, and less often those that they have to roll by hand.

Poles not only do not start smoking with disposable e-cigarettes – the most frequently chosen first nicotine product is still traditional cigarettes (90%) – but they also use them less frequently than the EU average.

Only 3% of respondents chose disposable e-cigarettes as their first choice. It is also clear that in Poland only 4% of respondents use disposables every day. As for heaters, 10% of respondents use them every day.

What is particularly noteworthy in this context is what the EC tries not to see, namely that vaping and the use of heaters helped more than half of the respondents to reduce or quit smoking.

In light of the above data, one can also find a conclusion that perhaps best reflects the way of thinking in the EC about combating nicotine addiction: “Despite the use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in attempts to quit smoking, the majority of non-smokers are sceptical about their effectiveness. While a small number believe in their potential to help quit smoking, their numbers pale in comparison to the majority who do not share this view.”

In other words, non-smokers have the final say on the effectiveness of the solutions used to combat addiction.

As if that were not enough, neither the EC health department, nor the report’s authors themselves, nor even Eurobarometer – no one has communicated the effects of their activities on the Internet. There has also been no, even cursory, press release on the matter. An oversight? Does anyone care that these results are not disseminated on a wider scale?