Brussels Aims to Make Europe ‘Smokefree’ – European Parliament Already Has a Plan

Brussels’ target to make Europe ‘smokefree’ by 2040 is faltering. High taxes, messy regulations, and a booming market for illegal cigarettes are undermining Europe’s anti-smoking efforts. Lately, though, the European Parliament has begun claiming smokefree successes and falling smoking rates. Has Brussels finally found a route to making its smokefree dream a reality?

For a population to be considered ‘smokefree,’ fewer than 5% of adults must be smokers. Achieving that by 2040 will require some huge drops in smoking rates. Around 1 in 4 European adults smoke. Smoking is above 20% in most European countries – sometimes almost double that. Getting adults to give up cigarettes in their tens of millions in such a short timeframe is an uphill struggle, so Brussels will need a strong strategy. Its current approach of raising excise taxes and regulating products to within an inch of their lives is backfiring – smokers simply switch to illicit cigarettes.

Why, then, did the European Parliament X account post an image comparing smoking rates across EU member states and boasting that “EU tobacco rules are helping to reduce smoking and prevent deaths”? Has Brussels discovered an alternative set of policies which might offer more success in bringing smoking rates down?

The European Parliament’s social media post highlights Sweden as the member state with the lowest smoking rate, at just 8%. (It also concedes in the post that new data suggests the Swedish smoking rate has dropped even further to 5%, making it the EU’s first smokefree country.) Sweden has left its European neighbours in the dust. Awkwardly for the EU, though, Sweden achieved its success by ignoring what Brussels was doing and pursuing a totally different approach.

The secret is this: the Swedish government did not get its smokers to quit en masse by forcing them away from cigarettes with aggressive tax hikes and smoking bans. In fact, many of Sweden’s smokers have not given up tobacco at all. Instead, they have switched from cigarettes to snus, a smokeless tobacco product. Sweden’s 1.1 million snus users simply place the product under their upper lip. No smoke required.

Switching from cigarettes to snus is near-miraculous for your health. Since snus doesn’t require burning tobacco, the switch brings a