Will Snus Be Legalised, EU Tobacco Directive Summary

Will Snus be legalised in the EU?

The EU Commission received 85,000 submissions to the public consultation regarding the EU Tobacco Directive.

This has been the biggest number of entries and petitions for any EU Public Consultation showing there is a huge interest from pro or anti tobacco members.

You can read the summary of the consultation in this PDF

This directive covers many aspects of Tobacco Regulations but the part that interests us is that it may either lift the ban on Snus sales in the EU or totally ban all Smokeless Tobacco.

It will also decide whether internet sales are prohibited or not.

The 2 paragraphs in the section that will either ban or leave internet sales intact that jump out at me are.

The snus industry say

Smokeless tobacco manufacturers raised concerns about restricting internet sales of tobacco. While they understand that legitimate issues exist, such as enforcing a minimum purchasing age and collecting appropriate tax revenues, a ban on sales through a specific channel distorts competition. They argue that such distortion is incompatible with the EU’s goal of strengthening the internal market. Smokeless tobacco industry ultimately pushed for no change to the current policy, based on the fact that the enforcement of minimum purchasing age and appropriate tax collection is common to a wide range of internet products, not only tobacco.

The Pharma industry say

The pharmaceutical industry pushed for a ban on all three distribution channels, in order to limit access to tobacco products inside the EU. Based on the evidence that many Member States have several of these policies in place, such actions would simply serve to harmonise existing standards inside the internal market. They made the additional claim that banning internet sales is of particular importance, since it is extremely unlikely that the warning information will be in the same language as the buyer’s country of origin. Finally, they advocated the increased usage of tobacco education programs, as limiting access is only half of the current approach to reduce tobacco use.

There is more than just Health being discussed here it is more about Money, yes gimme the Money Honey.

The pharma industry stand to lose so much if snus is readily available.    Nicotine Replacement Therapy generates a huge revenue for the Pharmaceutical Industry and the funny thing is it is only 10% successful at getting people to stop cigarettes.

Snus on the other hand is way more effective getting smokers to quit and if this was readily available then NRT product sales would go down.

In previous directives the Cigarette Companies and the Pharma industry were opposed to the Snus Ban being lifted.  But this time round the Cigarette companies are on board as they all have snus products now.

I believe the cigarette companies know that smoking is declining.  Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and Imperial all have Snus products available in Norway and Sweden.

So 2 big stakeholders the snus companies and the cigarette companies against the Pharma industry.

Who will win this war?

I feel very positive that the snus ban will be lifted although they may ban fruity snus brands.

You can read the full summary here