On 8 July 2021, the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania notified the European Commission of its intention to amend article 9(2) of Law No I-1143 on the control of tobacco, tobacco products and related products, which relates to e-liquids to be used in vaping products. The draft law would prohibit all e-liquid flavours, apart from tobacco, and would apply to non-nicotine containing e-liquids as well as nicotine containing e-liquids. A TRIS notification period is now open for contributions and will close on 11 October. You can read ETHRA’s contribution here.
According to the notification detail the aim of the flavour ban is to “reduce the attractiveness and demand of electronic cigarettes and electronic cigarette fillers (especially for young people who are particularly attracted to flavoured smoking products).” The clear and obvious problem with this is that non-tobacco flavoured e-liquids are the preference of the majority of adult vapers who have completely switched from smoking to vaping. Removing these products from the market would be disastrous for ex-smokers who rely on flavoured e-liquid to remain smoke free, driving many vapers back to smoking or to the black market to source products. As vaping is the most popular and effective method of smoking cessation, a flavour ban would have an extremely negative affect on future cessation efforts. This is especially relevant for Lithuania where smoking prevalence is 5 percentage points higher than the EU average, at 28%.
Please take the time to make a submission and explain the importance of flavoured e-cigarettes in smoking cessation. You can contribute as an individual or on behalf of your association. Submissions can be in any official EU language.
Lithuania doesn’t have a consumer association, so we are calling on all vapers and associations to make a submission to the TRIS notification, and outline why this legislation will be harmful to public health. It is of the utmost importance that we oppose flavour bans at every opportunity as we could soon see the same issues arising in other EU Member States.
Link for submitting your contribution:
https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/tris/en/search/?trisaction=search.detail&year=2021&num=434
After clicking on “Submit your contribution” you can either upload your submission as a file (pdf, doc, docx) or type directly into the webform. Contributions will be made public in TRIS unless you indicate that you wish to keep your contribution confidential.
Resources:
Link to TRIS: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/tris/en/search/?trisaction=search.detail&year=2021&num=434
Notification draft text: [link]
Notification detail: [link]