The European Parliament became the first legislature in the world to adopt a tobacco harm reduction perspective when it retained a pro-vaping provision in the landmark report on how to strengthen Europe in the fight against cancer that killed 1.3 million people in the region in 2020.
Members of the European Parliament on Feb. 16 voted 652 in favor of and 15 against the December 2021 report by the Parliament’s Special Committee on Beating Cancer which included the THR perspective in the broader campaign against cancer.
The THR perspective in the BECA report is reflected in the declaration that the committee “considers electronic cigarettes could allow some smokers to progressively quit smoking”. This makes the European Parliament the first chamber in the world to officially recognize THR as a public health policy, according to the Independent European Vape Alliance.
The Parliament also thumbed down attempts by a political faction to lift the report’s harm reduction declaration, according to IEVA. THR refers to a pragmatic approach to end the global smoking epidemic which affects 1.1 billion people worldwide.
It involves the use of less harmful alternatives such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products (HTPs) and snus to reduce the 8 million annual death toll from the smoking problem.
BECA Rapporteur Véronique Trillet-Lenoir, in a presentation before the Parliament, described the “Strengthening Europe in the fight against cancer” report as historic in terms of ambition, objectives and resources. “We will finally be able to fight effectively, together, against the health inequalities that persist within the European Union and respond to the needs of millions of Europeans affected by this disease. Today, the European Health Union is moving forward,” she said.
The IEVA said the eventual approval of the report is “a landmark declaration by the European Parliament, which should go a long way to reassuring smokers of the health benefits that a switch to vaping can bring”.
It said harm reduction has been practiced in many fields of healthcare for decades and has helped many people to curtail harmful habits, which is good both for them and those close to them.
“This model has also been successful in mitigating the death and disease associated with smoking. Over six million smokers in the EU have been able to significantly reduce the damage to their health by switching completely to reduced-risk alternatives such as the e-cigarette,” the IEVA said.
Public Health England, a leading health agency in Europe, confirmed the results of peer-reviewed studies showing that vaping, or the use of electronic cigarettes, is 95-percent less harmful than smoking tobacco.
The IEVA said the European Parliament’s vote also brings the EU a step closer to putting regulation in place that allows smokers to choose alternatives to smoking.
“We now encourage the other EU institutions—and in particular the European Commission—to take this on board and ensure that policy follows science, not the other way around,” said IEVA president Dustin Dahlmann.
BECA was established in June 2020 to come up with the report and completed its mandate on December 23, 2021 after an extensive consultation process through a series of public hearings. Members exchanged views with national parliaments and with international organizations and experts. It was chaired by Polish MEP Bartosz Arłukowicz and was tasked with establishing concrete recommendations for EU member states and institutions to strengthen the EU’s “resilience against cancer”.
The BECA report states that as more than 40 percent of all cancers are preventable through “coordinated actions targeting behavior-related, biological, environmental, work-related, socio-economic and commercial risk factors, MEPs call for effective prevention measures at national and EU level, based on independent scientific expertise.”
It calls on the European Commission to fund programs that promote smoking cessation and underlines, among other things, that tobacco consumption is a risk factor common to other chronic diseases and that cancer prevention and risk reduction measures have to be implemented in the context of an integrated chronic disease prevention program.
It asks the European Commission to follow up on the scientific evaluations of the health risks related to electronic cigarettes, HTPs and novel tobacco products, including the assessment of the risks of using these products compared to consuming other tobacco products, and the establishment at European level of a list of substances contained in and emitted by, these products.
When it comes to its THR provision, the report considers that electronic cigarettes could allow some smokers to progressively quit smoking and that e-cigarettes should not be attractive to minors and non-smokers. It, therefore, calls on the European Commission to evaluate, in the framework of the Tobacco Products Directive, which flavors in e-cigarettes are in particular attractive to minors and non-smokers for a possible ban on them.
Observers said the parliament’s approval and adoption of the BECA report would encourage the switch to these less harmful alternatives. It is also expected to harmonize individual country members’ views and policies on e-cigarettes, HTPs and other alternatives. This may also have broader implications worldwide, particularly in countries with a high death toll from smoking, according to them.