We have just written to the MEPs on the Special Committee on Beating Cancer (BECA) to express our dismay at some of the tobacco control measures proposed in the European Commission’s Beating Cancer plan.
We hope that our elected representatives can take our views into account at tomorrow's BECA meeting and exchange of views with Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides.
Consumers and experts submitted in their thousands to the two public consultations last year, yet those views are ignored in the Plan.
The Plan spectacularly fails to make a distinction between harmful smoking products and smoke free alternatives and signals that the Commission intends to turn its back on innovation and science by cracking down on vaping, the popular and far less risky alternative to smoking.
Read our letter here.
Tobacco harm reduction news from Europe.
Contents:
EUROPE’S BEATING CANCER PLAN REPORT
ETHRA NICOTINE USERS SURVEY FIRST DATA
FLAVOUR BANS AND OTHER ANTI-THR MEASURES
TAX
ACCESS TO THR PRODUCTS IN LOCKDOWNS
UK GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES CONSULTATION ON TOBACCO AND RELA
TED PRODUCTS
WHO STUDY GROUP ON TOBACCO REGULATION MEETING
WHO 2
COMING UP
ETHRA WATCHES THE BREATHE VISION LAUNCH
EUROPE’S BEATING CANCER PLAN REPORT
Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan is an ambitious EU project which aims to reduce the cancer burden and address cancer related inequalities. The European Commission’s report for the Plan is due to be published on 3rd February but the draft was leaked to the media last week. According to the leaked document, the Plan’s proposals for reducing smoking are very hostile to tobacco harm reduction.
The Dutch Minister for Health is proposing to ban all e liquid flavours (except for tobacco flavour).
There is a consultation open until 2nd February so please give your views.
It is an easy consultation to do - you only have to answer this one question:
“What do you think of the draft regulations?”
You can either type your answer into the text box or upload a document.
After putting your details in you will be presented with some settings, including whether to make your response public. Please make your response public if you wish it to be included on the consultation webpage.
After submitting your response you will receive an email and you will need to click on the hyperlink in there to confirm your submission.
The Overheid.nl website is only available in Dutch so please use Google translate or similar to translate the page into your language. Here it is in English:
2020 has been a busy year for tobacco harm reduction in Europe. Here we give you some of the news from December and look ahead to what is expected in 2021. Most importantly, there are 3 calls to action: 1) give your feedback to the EU tax roadmap, 2) respond to the NL consultation and 3) share our big consumer survey.
Tobacco Harm Reduction needs YOU!
Please take these 3 actions over the holidays:
1. EU tax roadmap
The EU Tax Directive is being revised and the Commission are considering the inclusion of vaping and “novel tobacco products” in the Directive.
You can give your feedback to the roadmap consultation for tax (link) before 5 January.
All the feedback submitted so far is here (link), including ETHRA’s (link).
See Vapolitique’s article for more information (link).
Read more: Seasons Greetings, calls to action, news round up and 2021