A leading addiction researcher warns the European Union is on the brink of a public health blunder, risking reversing decades of progress in reducing smoking–while ignoring its past success stories and lessons from US prohibition.
That is the damning assessment of Konstantinos Farsalinos, one of Europe’s most prominent researchers on tobacco harm reduction. He has spent over a decade studying the science and real-world impact of alternatives like e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.
In an interview with Brussels Signal at the World Nicotine Congress, Farsalinos argued the EU’s upcoming revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), and its push for punitive taxation on nicotine alternatives, were both misguided and dangerous.
At the heart of the problem is disregard for evidence, Farsalinos argues.
“The statements coming from the European Commission are truly exaggerating the facts,” he said, noting recent claims by officials that alternative nicotine products pose risks comparable to smoking.
“It’s unacceptable from a scientific perspective—even from a common-sense perspective.”
The irony, he notes, is the EU’s own data tell a different story.
Sweden, the only member state to have effectively eliminated smoking, did so by embracing harm reduction, yet Brussels seems determined to ignore the Swedish example.
“We’re supposed to reach a five per cent smoking prevalence by 2040. Sweden has already done it. But instead of learning from them, we’re targeting the very products that made it possible.”
There is a double standard between tobacco and marijuana, the Greek professor argues.
While European governments push for cannabis liberalisation—citing failures of prohibition, the rise of black markets, and the principle of self-determination—they simultaneously double down on restrictions for nicotine.
However, “the same arguments apply,” Farsalinos said.
“Prohibition doesn’t work. It creates illicit markets, it pushes people toward more dangerous alternatives, and it disproportionately harms the most vulnerable.”
He pointed to Denmark, where a 2022 ban on non-tobacco e-cigarette flavours led to a 70 per cent surge in vaping among young adults—63 per cent of whom were using the very fruit flavours the law was supposed to eliminate.
“In a country with no corruption, no smuggling infrastructure, they still lost control. So what do they expect to happen in the rest of Europe?”
The consequences of such policies are already playing out.
In Greece, where Farsalinos is based, a liberal approach to harm reduction has coincided with one of the steepest declines in smoking rates on the continent.
“We were number one in Europe for smoking, over 40 per cent at our peak. Now we’re below 30 per cent, and the drop has accelerated since harm reduction products became widely available.”
He said the shift isn’t just statistical; it’s visible.
“You see people on the streets using e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, pouches. These products are acting as smoking substitutes, not just consumer goods.”
Yet the health benefits, while inevitable, take time to manifest.
“Smoking causes long-term harm. It will be another decade before we see the full impact in public health data. But Sweden showed us what’s possible. They made the transition in the 80s and 90s, and now they have the lowest smoking rates in Europe.”
The EU’s refusal to acknowledge this progress is all the more baffling given its own data gaps.
Farsalinos revealed the Eurobarometer, the bloc’s key tool for tracking smoking trends, has quietly removed a critical question from its surveys: When did you quit smoking?
“Without that, we can’t isolate the impact of harm reduction products. We’re left with a single category of ‘former smokers,’ which includes people who quit 30 years ago, long before e-cigarettes existed. How can you measure the effect of these products if you refuse to track when people stopped smoking?”
“It’s the only question that would allow us to evaluate their impact. And now it’s gone.”
The upcoming tax directive, which would impose heavy levies on nicotine alternatives, threatens to undo what little progress has been made.
A leaked compromise proposal from the Cypriot presidency on the European Union’s Tobacco Excise Directive has drawn sharp criticism for undermining harm reduction. https://t.co/OCowRejkSU
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 16, 2026
“Price is a major incentive for smokers to switch,” Farsalinos explained.
“If you make vapes and pouches as expensive as cigarettes, you remove that incentive. And in an environment where misinformation is rampant and smokers aren’t even convinced these products are safer, why would they bother?”
The result, he predicts, will be a return to smoking for many people who had previously quit.
“We’ve seen it before. When people hear scare stories about vaping, most don’t just give up nicotine, they go back to cigarettes.
The global evidence that they do is overwhelming, Farsalinos said.
In the US, where vaping has been embraced as a smoking substitute, youth smoking rates have collapsed from 15.8 per cent in 2011 to just 1.5 per cent today. “Smoking has been eliminated among high schoolers,” Farsalinos said.
“Yet the EU acts as if harm reduction is the problem, not the solution.”
Meanwhile, countries that have banned alternatives, like Australia, where 98 per cent of the e-cigarette market is now illicit, have seen smoking rates stall and black markets thrive.
“Prohibition doesn’t work. Not for cannabis, not for alcohol, and not for nicotine. The only difference is that with nicotine, the stakes are even higher because we’re talking about a product that kills half its long-term users.”
Farsalinos reserves particular frustration for the EU’s refusal to engage with the totality of the evidence, accusing Brussels of “cherry picking studies” to find support for their position.
He pointed to the largest epidemiological study on e-cigarettes, published last year in the European Heart Journal, which followed 18,000 smokers with coronary artery disease.
Those who switched to vaping had the same reduction in risk as those who quit entirely, Farsalinos noted. “How can you look at that data and still tell a smoker with heart disease not to use an e-cigarette?”
The study’s findings were clear: Even users who vaped but didn’t fully quit smoking saw significant benefits. “Yet the EU acts as if this research doesn’t exist.”
The solution, Farsalinos argues, is not more restrictions but smarter regulation. One that learns from countries like Greece, the UK, and New Zealand, where harm reduction has been embraced as a public health strategy.
“These countries have seen the fastest declines in smoking. Sweden proved it’s possible to eliminate smoking entirely. But instead of following their lead, the EU is moving in the opposite direction.”
The upcoming TPD revision, risks introducing mistakes hurting the most vulnerable groups.
“In 2013, when the first TPD was drafted, we had almost no evidence. Yet the regulations they introduced were, in many ways, quite good. Now, with a mountain of data showing the benefits of harm reduction, they’re taking a huge step backward.”
The cost of this retreat will not just be measured in lost revenue or illicit trade, though both are inevitable, but, “The real cost is in human lives,” Farsalinos said.
“Every smoker who could have switched but doesn’t because of misinformation, because of high prices, because of bans. That’s a life at risk. The EU claims to care about public health. But right now, its policies are doing the opposite.”
Brussels has poured cold water over Sweden’s approach to tackling smoking and plans to move in a completely different direction with its upcoming tobacco plan. https://t.co/6uyQYMok4P
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 13, 2025
