The Nicotine Iron Curtain: Eight Governments Want to Decide Europe’s Future

Eight European governments (the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Latvia, Slovenia, and Spain) formally asked the European Commission to take an extreme approach to the next Tobacco Products Directive (TPD3): freeze new nicotine categories, impose broad flavour and nicotine restrictions, curb cross-border sales, and preserve national powers to ban products such as nicotine pouches. 

Youth protection matters. So do product standards, age verification, and enforcement against irresponsible companies. But adult consumers should not be treated as an afterthought, especially when cigarettes remain widely available.

“Protecting young people and protecting adult choice are not opposing goals. Europe can set strict standards, enforce age restrictions, and hold companies accountable without handing the cigarette a permanent advantage over potentially less harmful alternatives. Regulation should follow the evidence, not close the market before that evidence can even be considered,” says Markus Lindblad, Communications Director at Pouch Patrol.

Do not ban the future in advance

The signatories of the letter “urge the Commission to introduce a market freeze to make sure no new products containing any form of nicotine or a substance with nicotine-like properties, or any devices used to deliver such products, can enter the EU market in the future. This should also cover products that contain neither nicotine nor nicotine-like substance but resemble products that do.”

This proposed “market freeze” would block nicotine (and non-nicotine!) products that do not yet exist, regardless of their design, evidence, or potential role for adults who would otherwise smoke. That is not evidence-based regulation. It is a ban imposed before the evidence can even be assessed.

New products should meet strong safety, manufacturing, labelling, and marketing rules. They should not be excluded simply because they are new. Freezing innovation while leaving cigarettes on the market would protect the established combustible category from future competition.

Adult preferences cannot simply be regulated away

The letter also supports broad flavour restrictions and strict nicotine limits across product categories.

For many adults, a nicotine pouch is acceptable precisely because it does not taste like a cigarette. A low nicotine limit may also make an alternative less satisfactory. If legal products no longer meet adult needs, some may return to cigarettes or turn to unauthorised sellers.

Rules should target youth appeal and unsafe products. They should not erase product characteristics valued by adults without evidence that doing so improves public health outcomes.

A legal patchwork will not protect consumers

Giving individual countries wider scope to ban nicotine pouches while restricting cross-border distance sales would fragment the EU market. An adult could legally buy a regulated product in one member state but lose access after crossing a border.

Demand does not disappear because a legal sales channel closes. Consumers may switch products, buy from informal sellers, or use shady websites outside the regulated market. That means questionable products, less reliable information, weaker quality controls, fewer accountable businesses, and less tax revenue.

Europe has been here before

The EU banned the sale of snus in 1992, but Sweden secured an exemption when it joined the Union. Three decades later, the contrast is difficult to ignore: in the EU’s 2023 Eurobarometer survey, 8% of adults in Sweden reported smoking, compared with 24% across the EU.

History does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

Regulate according to risk and evidence

The central question is whether EU policy is trying to reduce smoking-related harm or eliminate nicotine use. Those goals can lead to very different rules and outcomes. Just look at Sweden as an example. Male smoking rates dropped in the 1970s and now they have the lowest lung cancer rates in the EU.

Cigarettes and nicotine pouches should not be regulated as if they are interchangeable. The EU should set high common standards, enforce age restrictions, and penalise companies that break the rules. It should also preserve legal, regulated choices for adults and leave room to assess future products on their merits.

Adults deserve more than a choice between cigarettes and nicotine prohibition. When Europeans meet to decide the future of nicotine regulation, they should protect young people without locking adults into the most harmful product on the market.