Harm reduction

Ireland has the Presidency, a Tobacco Excise Directive to finish and a Swedish veto blocking the road. If they want to succeed with bringing the EU Member States to a unanimous agreement, its strategic approach is a mystery. The Irish compromise would eventually impose a minimum tax on nicotine pouches of €80/kg. Ireland must surely […]

There are two schools of thought in today’s tobacco and nicotine policy debate. One wants to reduce smoking. The other wants to reduce nicotine use. As long as policymakers continue to pretend these are the same thing, Europe will continue to fail. Because if the goal really is to eliminate cigarettes, policymakers should start by […]

As the EU prepares its next major tobacco and nicotine legislation, there are two countries Brussels should study more closely. Australia and New Zealand chose very different paths. The results could hardly be more different. As the third version of the EU Tobacco Products Directive, TPD3, gets closer, pressure is growing from countries and organisations […]

Australia has long been praised as a global leader in tobacco control. With extremely high taxes, strict restrictions and policies closely aligned with WHO recommendations, the goal was to reduce nicotine use. The result? According to official estimates, the black market now accounts for around 80% of all tobacco and nicotine consumption. More and more […]

In Brussels, they sit and write the future of Europe. Not as a vision of freedom, innovation, or quality of life—but as a detailed rulebook for how you should live your life, chew your food, and manage your own habits. It’s called public health. In practice, it is lifestyle politics. At the center stands the […]

At this month’s Technovation in Stockholm, scientists, policymakers, and industry leaders gathered to discuss the future of smoke-free products, including nicotine pouches. Haypp’s Markus Lindblad explained why online retail is structurally better at preventing youth access to nicotine than physical stores, and what framework is needed to make it work across the EU.  Lindblad opened […]

The ambition to reduce smoking is, at its core, self-evident. Cigarette smoking remains one of the largest preventable causes of disease and premature death worldwide. Yet international experience shows that the path to achieving this is far from straightforward – and that well-intentioned political decisions can, in practice, absolutely do more harm than good. There […]

The follow‑up report on the “Assignment to the Public Health Agency of Sweden and the National Board of Health and Welfare to develop supporting material for monitoring the objective of tobacco and nicotine policy” (S2025/01796) demonstrates clear signs of institutional activism, reflected in a lack of scientific quality and methodological breadth. This response follows a […]

Another compromise proposal on the EU’s new Tobacco Tax Directive (TTD) has now been circulated from Brussels. But behind the word “compromise” lies, in practice, the same fundamental failure as before. What we are seeing is unchanged, excessively high tax levels on risk-reduced nicotine products—now merely disguised by slightly softer transition periods. Markus Lindblad, Head […]

The World Health Organization claims it wants to save lives. In practice, it does the opposite.  – In its latest report on global tobacco use, WHO deliberately blurs crucial distinctions between deadly combustible smoking and significantly less harmful nicotine products. All nicotine is lumped together as a single threat. The result is not public health policy, but an ideological tripwire, says Markus Lindblad, Head of Communications at Pouch […]