“Heated tobacco” users across the European Union significantly increased in a couple of years. But they are not able to purchase “flavored” products anymore as they now have to carry a neutral flavor to be legal.
Since October 23, the sale of heated tobacco products, where tobacco in cigarettes is heated instead of burnt, has been limited in the European Union due to the dramatic increase in their popularity over the last few years.
Tobacco products in general have been tied to a higher risk of cancer, and observation of trends in EU member states led them to make a legislative decision.
Heated tobacco products refer to devices that heat up tobacco leaf in stick form, sometimes via other substances or liquid, instead of just burning the sticks to smoke them. It is different from vaping and e‑cigarettes, which may still include nicotine but do not heat any tobacco.
The main limitation being implemented is identical to the previous ban of all “flavored” cigarettes, which includes those that “has any characterizing flavor or contains flavorings in any of their components.” This same standard is now being applied to all heated tobacco products. In the amendment, they are defined as all tobacco products “heated to produce an emission containing nicotine and other chemicals” used as a “smokeless tobacco product or a tobacco product for smoking.”
This decision was made in July 2022, entering into force in November, and gave time for countries to include the new provisions by July 23rd 2023 and apply them on October 23rd 2023.
The reason for the delay is clarified by the EU’s original directive to limit tobacco usage of 2014, saying that prohibitions of tobacco products with “characterizing flavor” should be “phased out to allow for users to switch to other products.”
These products cannot have any particular flavor that modifies “the taste of the tobacco” or its “smoke intensity” anymore. All products like these will have to carry a neutral flavor.
From 1 billion to 20,000 billion cigarette sticks for heated tobacco sold annually in 2 years
The EU originally pointed out threats of flavored tobacco in 2014, saying that they “could facilitate initiation of tobacco consumption or affect consumption patterns” in the now-amended directive, which means they feared it could create a large uptick in tobacco consumption due to their appealing flavors that mask the tobacco. Since then, they have also banned the sale of all flavored cigarettes for the same reason.
The European Commission published the market study they used to monitor the sales of heated tobacco products. It found that sales of heated tobacco products increased from 900 million cigarette sticks to 20,000 billion sticks sold per year between 2018 and 2020 across all 27 member countries. Many EU countries sold close to no heated tobacco products in 2018 but started selling hundreds of millions of them by 2019 and 2020.
For instance, Hungary had only 3,000 sales of sticks in 2018, and by 2020, it had yearly sales of 289 million sticks. Countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy had a similar pattern.
In 2018 heating tobacco was not as popular in these countries and had a “boom” in 2019. This data, along with the determination that heated tobacco products held at least 3.51% of the tobacco market share in 2020, was justification enough to move forward with the regulation.
According to the EU’s own rules, the sales of these products across 2018–2020 needed to meet certain criteria to make laws limiting them. Legislators were able to ban flavored heated tobacco products because the study showed an increase in sales of sticks of at least 10% in at least five member states and the market for sticks represented at least 2.5% of the total tobacco market.
Another regulation was added to heated tobacco products to include it within the larger group of cigarettes and roll-your-own cigarettes, forcing them to carry a label with an image and message of the risks of smoking tobacco on the packaging.
While heated tobacco products are sold by industrials as a less harmful way of smoking tobacco, further research is still needed to understand their short and long-term effects on health. The use of any type of tobacco is considered harmful.
Stella Kyriakides, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said last year: “By removing flavored heated tobacco from the market we are taking yet another step towards a ‘Tobacco Free Generation’ with less than 5% of the population using tobacco by 2040. […] With nine out of ten lung cancers caused by tobacco, we want to make smoking as unattractive as possible to protect the health of our citizens and save lives.”
