As European Commissioner for Health Olivér Várhelyi was working on a new update for the EC’s tobacco directive, Brussels Signal took part in a media visit to US multinational cigarette maker Philip Morris International’s (PMI) Swiss facility.
In 2025, smoking cigarettes, alternatives to smoking and possible bans on both were expected to be heavily debated topics.
European regulators have been increasingly cracking down on products they deemed undesirable, such as cigarettes, alcohol, certain chemicals, various types of emissions, AI that has not been regulated by the EU and even loose bottle caps.
According to the EC: “There are no safe levels of tobacco or nicotine consumption, including from smoke-free tobacco products.”
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Article 5.3 Guidelines stated that parties to the convention should refuse to treat tobacco corporations as “stakeholders” in public health policy. Neither should they invest in the tobacco industry or partner with tobacco corporations to promote public health or for any other purposes.
PMI told Brussels Signal it deeply regretted this attitude, saying if governments and regulators discussed the issues with the company, everyone would benefit.
Against that backdrop, major manufacturers have been attempting to make significant moves.
A prominent example was PMI. It has been working to move out of producing traditional cigarettes, yet its biggest opponent appeared to be the European Union.
That was the impression PMI staff gave to Brussels Signal at the company’s Cube, the scientific centre on the shores of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland where around 1,500 scientists and engineers have been working on new products which they intend will be healthier.
Between 2009 and 2023, PMI invested $12.5 billion (€12.12 billion) into so-called smoke-free products. The firm’s stated goal was to be “smoke free” soon.
Alongside that, it has published more than 500 peer-reviewed works.
According to PMI, the toxins and carcinogens in tobacco smoke were the cause of most related health problems and it said its innovations minimised and even avoided them. Nicotine was seen as addictive but not toxic.
On top of this, its Iqos products contained less nicotine. Iqos is the company’s name for the electronic device it developed to inhale heated tobacco. Such products thus no longer apply combustion, as that was said to be most damaging to health.
Pressured by governments, WHO and others, the company has worked to reduce the toxicity of tobacco products and created products, which it said observers would consider less harmful. PMI called this “tobacco harm reduction” and said they would help people who wanted to quit smoking do so.
Asked if that would adversely affect its economic baseline, PMI insisted it would not.
Company representatives stressed that with one billion smokers worldwide, they expected to have a sufficient buffer, especially given the less harmful substitute products the firm was developing.
PMI’s corporate messaging included: “If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you smoke, quit. If you don’t quit, change.”
It was also stressed that its products remained visually rather bland and that it shied away from techniques potentially appealing to underaged smokers.
The representatives did stress they needed help from world leaders, governments, regulators and NGOs, who, they claimed, refused to enter discussions or evaluate the science behind smoke-free alternatives compared to cigarette smoking.
According to PMI, its smoke-free products were so significantly less harmful that the impact of switching from cigarettes to these alternatives was more comparable to quitting smoking tobacco altogether.
In this context, PMI said the Cube played a key role, serving as a centre where scientists studied population harm, exposure risks and toxicity reduction through clinical studies, behavioural research, toxicology, aerosol chemistry and physics, as well as product design and control principles.
Brussels Signal was given a tour of the centre’s R&D facilities, which included an overview of their Iqos products.
There was also a demonstration of a smoking machine, showing the effects of inhaling a classic cigarette, leaving behind the recognisable black smudge on a white paper, next to the typical smell; and the effects of its new alternative leaving behind barely visible traces and hardly any smell.
According to PMI, its new products reduced toxins by more 90 per cent compared to traditional cigarettes.
The representatives cited the firm’s clinical studies as evidence and said a growing number of independent third-party studies backed these findings.
It was noted that 11 government agency assessments and more than 750 independent research publications supported this, alongside the Dutch, German, Belgian, Japanese and British governments.
Many anti-cancer organisations promoted the use of e-cigarettes or vaping as a smoking cessation aid. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has stated: “Although they are not completely risk free, the available evidence shows them to be far less harmful than smoking.”
A similar conclusion was found by the Belgian Supreme Health Council, with the warning that it could be used as a tool to quit – but also act as a stepping stone to smoking tobacco.
This was the argument PMI also made, repeatedly claiming it wanted to steer all its users to less harmful alternatives.
It was further noted that countries that encouraged their populations towards harm reduction via e-cigarettes (New Zealand), heated tobacco (Japan), snus or nicotine pouches (Sweden, Iceland) saw a sharp decline in smoking prevalence, outperforming that in nations with smoking bans.
In countries such as Japan, there appeared to be a strong correlation between people quitting smoking and the use of less harmful alternatives.
Sweden, where snus is very popular, has one of the lowest smoking rates in the developed world and the lowest tobacco-related mortality rates among males in the EU.
Yet Sweden was seen as an exception in the EU and Brussels has said it wanted to follow the exact opposite route for all other member states, applying blanket smoking bans.
According to PMI, the EU missed the point of, for example, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in the US, which ranked nicotine and tobacco products on risk and regulated it accordingly.
“Using [the Swedish brand] General Snus instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis,” the FDA said in its latest report in November 2024.
According to PMI, its harm-reduction products were proving very successful and its new heated tobacco offerings already produced similar annual net revenues to its iconic cigarette brand Marlboro.
Wanda De Kanter, a Dutch pneumonologist and anti-tobacco activist, did not agree with PMI and told Brussels Signal in a reaction after the visit: “Electronic cigarettes were introduced in 2011 to enslave young people.
“Lawsuits and lobbying in the European Parliament led to the opposite of what the health sector wanted: instead of registering it as a smoking cessation method on a doctor’s prescription, it became a consumer product. The Trojan horse thus entered.
“E-cigarettes with colours and thousands of flavours, extremely addictive nicotine salts made their entrance. A vaping epidemic among young people is the result – 70 per cent of them start smoking cigarettes. The gateway effect is a fact. For the first time in years, the number of children smoking has increased. Thanks to those vapes.”
De Kanter added: “Smokers who try to quit by vaping remain addicted and 70 per cent use both. With even more harm. Sweden has a lower number of smokers, not because of snus but because of other measures, such as price and availability.”
Despite that, an online search by Brussels Signal indicated that prices of cigarettes in Sweden were not especially high compared to other countries.
De Kanter also said that “industry has done a lot to cause this epidemic” and referred to the anti-smoking website of her foundation, which targeted the tobacco lobby.
She said the tobacco industry poured billions in advertising and had sent lobbyists to the House of Representatives and European Parliament. She called it a “policy dystopia model. Sowing doubt.”
De Kanter referred to the tobacco playbook, a strategy used by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious illnesses. “See what the tobacco industry does to promote ordinary cigarettes worldwide. A smoke-free world? We play bullshit bingo with such terms,” she stated.
An EC spokesperson told Brussels Signal: “Tobacco and nicotine consumption is the largest avoidable health risk, and the most significant cause of premature death in the EU, with nearly 700,000 lives lost in the EU every year due to tobacco consumption. Tobacco is a leading risk factor for cancer, with more than a quarter of cancer deaths attributed to smoking in the EU, Iceland, and Norway.”
Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan aimed to reduce the cancer burden in the EU and set the objective of achieving a Tobacco-Free Generation by 2040, where 5 per cent of the EU population used tobacco products compared to the 25 per cent in 2021.
The spokesperson called that “an ambitious goal”, adding: “The Commission is currently carrying out a comprehensive evaluation of the Tobacco Products Directive and the Tobacco Advertising Directive.
“The evaluation will inform possible next steps, in line with the mission letter to Commissioner Várhelyi.”
“Member States may prohibit certain categories of tobacco or related products if this is justified by the need to protect public health and related to the specific situation in the Member State (on the basis of the Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU),” the spokesperson said.
“Member states have to notify such bans to the Commission. The latter will assess whether these bans are justified, necessary and proportionate, and whether they are discriminatory or a restriction on trade.”
To date, the EC has adopted national measures notified by Belgium and France regarding electronic cigarettes,
The sale of snus is illegal in the EU apart from Sweden. The derogation was granted on the condition that the country took all necessary measures to ensure snus was not placed on the market in other member states.
The EC spokesperson said, on December 6, 16 member states had issued a statement calling for the rules on tobacco taxation to be modernised and that the EC “agrees that tobacco taxation is one of the most effective instruments to curb smoking prevalence and to deter young people from taking up smoking”.
“Preparatory work is ongoing to review and update the Tobacco Taxation Directive, in line with the ongoing revision of public health policies around tobacco control. Member states have already implemented tax regimes to tackle the new products that have appeared on their markets.”
“The absence of a harmonised framework at EU level currently creates concerns for the single market. However, the experience gained by member states on the taxation of new products is of high interest and the latest market and regulatory data are being collected and will provide elements to inform the discussions. “
Tobacco is set to become a hot-button issue in the next legislature after the European Commission signaled it wants to pick up the fight against smoking and everything remotely related to it. https://t.co/iayPf2QXMv
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) November 12, 2024
