The Geography of Control to Legislate Desire
July draws a map of decrees that, from Europe to the Caribbean, redefine the world’s relationship with nicotine and tobacco, on that blurred frontier where fear, desire, and the common good collide.
The world legislates nicotine as it legislates desire: with caution, with fear, and with a certain moral modesty. From Spain to Jamaica, from the policy laboratories of Sweden to British pragmatism, each decree is more than a legal text: it is a mirror reflecting how much we are willing to sacrifice to protect life and how much we resist giving up in order not to lose pleasure.
And yet, the paradox emerges: while the combustible cigarette —that perfect machine of death— continues to circulate, it is the less harmful alternatives that bear the heaviest weight of punishment. In regulating, governments are not only confronting tobacco: they are confronting their ethical limits and their political and economic interests.
In the scorching summer of 2025, as Spain wrestled with the invisible flames of heat waves and the visible ones of increasingly bitter political disputes, Pedro Sánchez’s government put forth a decree that, at least on paper, aimed to save lives.
It was more than just a legal text: it was a desperate attempt to govern amid climate collapse and the deafening noise of a country fractured by its divisions.
On July 22, in a gesture as technical as it was deeply ideological, the government made public its responses to the objections raised by seven European countries—Sweden, Italy, Greece, and others—that had questioned its draft Royal Decree.
This was no minor regulation, but an instrument with the potential to quietly reshape a growing market: that of alternatives to combustible cigarettes, which today represent a path toward harm reduction for millions of people. Among its provisions, one stood out: a limit of 0.99 mg of nicotine per pouch in nicotine pouches. This figure seemed less about regulating and more about suffocating the product, effectively condemning it to disappear.
But Spain didn’t stop there. The proposal expanded the regulatory landscape: it mandated plain packaging for cigarettes, prohibited non-tobacco flavors in vapes, nicotine pouches, and herbal heated products (HPH), introduced new health warnings, and established a 5 mg nicotine limit per unit for HPH.
It was a decree that, beneath the technical veneer of public health, ignored the fundamental difference between combustible tobacco—the primary driver of mortality—and smokeless alternatives, introducing restrictions that threatened to erase that crucial boundary.
It was a declaration of war on the packaging of desire: an offensive against the glimmers, flavors, and aromas that for decades have masked the chemical violence of tobacco. But it was also an attack on the codes that, in lower-risk alternatives, have helped many smokers leave traditional cigarettes behind.
The official discourse stated it with the simplicity of the irrefutable: “This is not about the market, but about protecting life.” Yet the criticisms from its European neighbors exposed a deeper fracture: Is it coherent to ban or restrict to the point of suffocation less harmful alternatives while cigarettes, responsible for 95% of tobacco-related deaths, continue to circulate with far fewer obstacles? The question was not merely technical or legal: it was ethical, political, and, above all, uncomfortable.
Sweden, a country on the verge of achieving “smoke-free” status, responded with actions rather than rhetoric. In recent decades, it has reduced its adult smoking rate to under 5%—the lowest in Europe—thanks to the widespread use of snus and other oral nicotine products.
Its story is heresy in the temple of prohibitionism: proving that offering less harmful alternatives does not undermine public health policies but strengthens them, becoming a pragmatic path toward harm reduction. It is no surprise that Sweden led the objections to Spain’s decree: its very success stands as a challenge to the continent’s most rigid regulatory frameworks.
Spain, by contrast, shields itself behind the armor of European law and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, insisting that its limits are not only compatible with these regulations but demanded by the higher principle of public health. It also denies that such measures could cause significant market disruptions or conflict with EU law.
However, time offers no reprieve: the suspension period will expire on July 28. After that, the decree will descend into the pit of Parliament, where politics—with its fragile alliances, strategic calculations, and deeper battles—will decide whether it survives or sinks.
Europe: A Continent Legislating at Multiple Speeds
The fragmentation of the European regulatory framework is not a new phenomenon. The EU’s Tobacco Products Directive sets common standards but leaves expansive room for member states to expand them at their discretion. That space, conceived for flexibility, has become fertile ground for divergent experiments: Europe today is a policy laboratory where each country tests its relationship with nicotine and tobacco—sometimes embracing harm reduction, sometimes banishing it to the same corner as combustion.
In the Netherlands, the government has taken another step in its crusade to strip tobacco and nicotine of their visual appeal: it is preparing plain packaging for vapes and cigarettes. This is not merely about changing wrappers, but about silencing the invisible language of marketing—the colors, textures, and shapes that, for generations, have seduced and tamed consumers.
Yet within this imposed silence lies a paradox: the regulation casts combustible tobacco—responsible for millions of deaths—and smokeless alternatives, whose risk is significantly lower according to much of the scientific evidence, under the same shadow of suspicion. By erasing the distinctions between problem and solution, policy may end up pushing consumers toward the deadliest product in the name of protecting them.
Here lies the same critique. Austria, aligned with the EU’s Delegated Act, has chosen to amputate the sensory appeal of heated tobacco products. It banned characteristic flavors, toughened health warnings, and granted the industry a deadline until May 2026 to adapt. It is a surgical move: excising the aromas that for years have sweetened the perception of risk, stripping these products of their seductive wrapping to expose their rawness.
Yet by applying the same scalpel to combustible tobacco and smokeless alternatives, Austria erases the essential differences between them, making identical products that science has placed at opposite ends of the harm spectrum. And in that homogenization, the goal of protecting risks gives way to contradiction.
The Czech Republic chose the scalpel: it will not ban all flavors, only the “candy-like” ones that “appeal to minors.” It is a policy that seeks to walk the fine line between protecting the most vulnerable and keeping available alternatives that, for many adult smokers, have served as a doorway out of traditional cigarettes.
On July 22, Health Minister Vlastimil Válek confirmed that his office is finalizing the draft, a measure first announced in August 2024 as a total flavor ban. But the waters have since calmed: by October of that year, the government clarified that the restriction would focus exclusively on flavors aimed at young audiences. It will not be an outright ban but a surgical adjustment that places Prague on the European board, in an intermediate position: avoiding the outright demonization of non-combustible products while addressing legitimate concerns about their appeal to minors.
Belgium, by contrast, chose to soften its proposal to limit nicotine use on outdoor terraces, removing the controversial requirement to maintain a ten-meter distance. The new approach restricts use only within the spaces occupied by the terraces and “in their immediate surroundings.”
The measure, driven by Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, still has a long and winding road ahead: it must first become a draft bill, then open to parliamentary debate, and finally secure approval. The timeline does not favor urgency: forecasts suggest that the legislative process will not conclude before 2027. Belgium prefers measured deliberation over hasty decisions that could result in equating cigarettes and their alternatives without nuance.
And Bulgaria, after an administrative misstep, was forced to redo the procedure for its proposed ban on disposable vapes—a reminder that in the machinery of the European Union, deadlines and procedures are as political as the substance of the rules themselves.
On July 25, Sofia submitted a revised draft bill to the European Commission, replacing the notification sent on July 9. The earlier submission had been prematurely closed by Brussels after it found that the law had already been adopted and published in the Official Gazette before being presented—an action that breached EU protocol.
The Commission then “invited” Bulgaria either to withdraw the text or submit a new one, and the government chose the latter. A new suspension period now begins, set to conclude on October 28, 2025, while uncertainty lingers over the legislative path the proposal will follow. It is a pause that may, perhaps, allow for a more balanced discussion: how to regulate disposable devices without condemning the entire spectrum of less harmful alternatives.
Each of these moves reveals a different tension between protection, market forces, and individual freedoms. It forms a mosaic showing that Europe, more than legislating, is in dialogue—and at times in conflict—with itself: torn between the urgency to protect, the pressure of economic interests, and citizens’ right to decide what risks they are willing to take. In that fragmented mirror, health policy ceases to be merely technical; it becomes the reflection of a continent still struggling to accept that harm reduction can be an ally, not an enemy.
Beyond the Old Continent: The Prohibitionist Pendulum
The map doesn’t end at the Atlantic. Jamaica is preparing to silence the voice of tobacco and nicotine: a bill, long in the making since 2020, is moving toward a comprehensive advertising ban, cutting the problem at its root. This is not merely about prohibiting ads, but about dismantling the invisible discourse that, for decades, sustained the business of smoke—a language of promises, aspirations, and pleasures that turned consumption into a cultural act rather than an individual choice. Yet one decisive question remains: Will Jamaica distinguish between the risk dynamics of combustible tobacco and those of smokeless products, or will it lump them together under the same ban, erasing nuances that scientific evidence insists on underscoring?
In Malaysia, the government is considering a complete ban on the sale and use of vapes. “A process that requires careful deliberation,” admitted Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad. The dilemma is not technical but deeply political: how to prohibit without fracturing, how to impose a drastic measure without igniting resistance in a society that has already embraced these devices as a tool for leaving combustible tobacco behind.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, New Zealand is stepping back. In September 2025, it will revoke the requirement for vapes to have removable batteries—a rule that had clashed head-on with market realities and technological limitations. The move is mainly symbolic: the country once hailed as a global pioneer for its ambitious plan to become “smoke-free” is now tempering its aspirations with pragmatism. It serves as a reminder that even the boldest leaders in tobacco control must constantly negotiate between vision and viability, particularly when it comes to maintaining access to less harmful alternatives.
And the United Kingdom, true to its tradition of realism, chose a hybrid path: it does not attack consumption but manages its footprint. It has created a new category of electronic waste for vapes and heated tobacco products, integrating tobacco control into a broader environmental management strategy. The implicit message seems clear: the problem doesn’t end in the lungs—it continues in the landfills. And within this pragmatic logic, the UK has managed to sustain one of the most consistent harm-reduction approaches, without sacrificing its public health policy to the inertia of prohibitionism.
Legislating Life, Negotiating Desire
Each measure, from the Dutch plain packaging to the Malaysian ban, reveals more than a health strategy. These are decrees that speak their nations’ language: they tell national stories, expose collective fears, and trace the boundaries of what is politically possible. At its core, tobacco and nicotine regulation work like a mirror: it reflects what each society is willing to sacrifice to protect life and what it refuses to relinquish to preserve pleasure.
And so, amid decrees, deadlines, and public consultations, the world legislates not only over bodies and lungs but also over desires. Because tobacco—and its alternatives—still inhabit that uneasy territory where pleasure and death negotiate, day by day, the price of coexistence. The real question now is whether public policies will be able to distinguish between what kills and what can save.