The vote was intended to make tobacco smoking less attractive to young people through mandatory warnings, minimum pack sizes, and rules on flavourings.

However, the revision of the EU ‘Tobacco Products Directive’ would classify most e cigarettes as a medicinal product, despite the fact that in the UK alone 25 percent of all attempts to kick the habit are made using e cigarettes, making them the most popular aid.

The European Commission had proposed that e cigarettes containing 4 milligrammes or more of nicotine must be classed as medicinal products but an EU parliamentary committee went further, voting to classify all e cigarettes as pharmaceuticals, regardless of the nicotine content.

Users of e cigarettes (known as vapers) have protested, arguing that through e cigarettes they were able to kick the tobacco habit.

They say classifying them as medical devices will mean they must undergo a costly and protracted authorisation processes before marketing. Their availability would be restricted to certain pharmacies.

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Producers of e cigarettes said the vote could push many out of business and reduce choice for e cigarette users.

Fraser Cropper, chief executive of e cigarette company Totally Wicked, said “It will result in many smaller and more innovative producers of e cigarettes going out of business. Medicines regulation creates a default prohibition and requirement for approval, leaving deadly tobacco cigarettes as the only easily marketed source of nicotine.”

Martin Callanan, Conservative MEP, proposed an amendment that would see e cigarettes authorised in a similar way to other nicotine products.

He said, “”The world has gone mad when tobacco is less regulated than products designed to end tobacco use. Thousands of people have given up smoking thanks to e cigarettes. For the EU to over regulate them is completely counter productive and hypocritical.

“This vote is not the end of this process and we will be working with vapers to make other MEPs see sense and support e cigarette producers and users.”

Policy toward the new technology widely varies across the EU. Some countries such as Denmark have banned them, while in others such as Britain they are freely available for sale with no restrictions.

Poland to challenge eu ban on menthol cigarettes

Cigarettes online Blog Archive Cdc – fact sheet – tobacco industry marketing – smoking & tobacco use

WARSAW (Reuters) Poland will appeal to Europe’s top court over a European Union ban on flavored tobacco products, saying it will be unfairly affected as one of the region’s biggest consumers and producers of menthol cigarettes.

The ban is a part of EU wide anti smoking legislation, due to be implemented in 2016, which also includes tougher rules on packaging and marketing.

Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy Janusz Piechocinski has said that menthol flavored cigarettes should be considered a traditional product not unlike the Swedish “snus”, powdered tobacco placed under the lip and therefore exempt from the directive.

According to the World Lung Foundation, Poland remains one of the EU’s heavy smoking nations, with annual consumption of 1,586 cigarettes per capita twice as large as Britain’s.

But while the country’s tobacco consumption rates are by no means extraordinary, its affection for menthol certainly is nearly one in every five cigarettes sold here is menthol flavored, compared to one in ten in Sweden and below one in a hundred in Spain, Austria or Slovakia.

“Menthol cigarettes were introduced to Poland in 1953 and Polish smokers have developed a unique taste for them,” said Magdalena Wlodarczyk, representing British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International, which together have 99 percent of the Polish market.

“There is no reason why they should get hit so hard over this.”

As well as being a consumer, the country is also the second largest producer of tobacco in the EU, with Polish tobacco farms employing over 60,000 people.

It is also the seventh largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the world, with five processing sites and six factories employing further thousands.

Poland’s tobacco industry welcomed the government’s appeal, to be made to the Court of Justice of the European Union.

“Burley, the tobacco used in production of menthol cigarettes because of its flavor absorbing properties accounts for nearly 40 percent of Poland’s production,” said Lech Ostrowski, head of the National Union of Tobacco Farmers, representing 7,000 producers.

“We can’t all switch to growing Virginia, because the market will simply not accommodate it and prices will fall.”

A report commissioned by Poland’s National Association of the Tobacco Industry says the new tobacco legislation will destroy 30,000 jobs in production, manufacturing and distribution.

The report also estimates that it will cost the country up to nine billion zlotys ($3 billion) in lost tax revenue every year, as Polish menthol smokers turn to cigarettes smuggled in from Belarus and Ukraine.

A KPMG study commissioned by the same body estimates that illegal cigarettes account for over 10 percent of market share across the EU and nearly 14 percent in Poland itself.

“By ensuring that tobacco products look and taste like tobacco products, the new rules will help to reduce the number of people who start smoking in the EU,” European Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said in a statement.

Borg spoke of the devastating effect tobacco had on the health of EU citizens, citing 700,000 premature deaths every year and 14 fewer years of life on average for smokers.

Poland’s Minister of Health Bartosz Arlukowicz supported the legislation, and Piechocinski said the appeal caused a “fierce argument” between them.

But while the economic concerns seem to have ultimately outweighed the public health risks, the Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki said that tobacco farmers needed to use the time the appeal buys them and invest in other crops, as “the war for tobacco was already lost”.

($1 3.0703 Polish Zlotys)

(Editing by Keiron Henderson)