European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates

: Published: 14 January 2021

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:

: Published: 22 December 2020

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).

: Published: 08 December 2020

On Wednesday 2nd December, the Special Committee on Beating Cancer of the European Parliament (BECA) convened a hearing with leading specialists in cancer prevention entitled “Facilitating a healthy lifestyle: how to reduce cancer related lifestyle risk factors.” This was the first committee hearing to focus on prevention.

Before introducing the experts, Chair of the BECA, Bartosz Arłukowicz, opened the hearing by stressing the importance of preventative measures in combating cancer, stating that 40% of cancer cases in Europe are preventable.

: Published: 27 November 2020

Guest post from ANESVAP, Spanish THR consumer association and ETHRA partner.

Last week the Spanish Ministry of Health published a horrifyingly biased report on e-cigarettes. We believe that the purpose of the report is to justify e-liquid flavour bans and punitive taxation on vaping products, proposals which are expected in 2021.

The Spanish government’s report shares striking similarities with the recently published SCHEER preliminary Opinion on e-cigarettes, a key element of the review report of TPD2. Scientists and other experts have roundly criticised the SCHEER preliminary Opinion for lacking objectivity and ignoring evidence. We are now waiting to see if SCHEER can redeem their reputation with the final Opinion, expected next month. Unfortunately, there is no such hope for the Spanish report, as the final version - which was issued without any public consultation - is already published.