EU Commission, time to listen to the facts!
25th Mar 2024
Once again, a new report states that the European Commission’s focus must shift from nicotine consumption to harm reduction if lives are to be saved in the future. This is surely a wake-up call for top officials in Brussels as the Tobacco Directive is being revised in the Commission.
In the report Fighting smoking with alternative nicotine products, David Sundén, PhD and CEO of Lakeville, argues that oral nicotine, such as snus and nicotine replacement products, is important to help smokers quit smoking.
The report also concludes that Sweden will soon be a smoke-free country as defined by the WHO, and that this has less to do with price, taxes and regulations and more to do with the availability of healthier nicotine alternatives.
It becomes clearer and clearer every day that nicotine saves lives. Yet resistance seems to be as massive as ever. When will the European Commission start taking the facts into account?
According to the report, 210,000 men could potentially be saved every year. And while it is not possible to get an equally reliable figure for women’s lives, we can easily conclude that millions and millions of lives could be saved within a few years with a permissive EU policy on the sale of oral nicotine.
Europeans must be given a realistic opportunity to choose safer nicotine products instead of smoking. Public health is clearly at stake.
