Trapped Between Evidence and Ideology: Lessons from the SCOHRE Event on Europe's Nicotine Future
At the heart of the Old Continent, where laws strive to catch up with facts, a new silent battle is unfolding: regulating what is still being understood and legislating without suppressing what might save lives.
When the clarity of evidence and the precision of data outpace the sluggish rhythm of regulation, the European Union faces a dilemma that goes beyond legal frameworks: how to reduce the harms of smoking without stifling innovation in potentially less harmful products?
This was the central issue addressed in a recent online seminar organized by the scientific organization SCOHRE, titled “The Evolving Regulatory Landscape in the EU: Opportunities and Challenges”. The event brought together prominent experts such as Dr. Karl Erik Lund, Damian Sweeney, Clive Bates, and Professor Andrzej Fal.
More than a technical discussion, the seminar became a clear portrait of the moral, political, and scientific tensions that, now more than ever, shape the nicotine debate in Europe.
Harm reduction—a classical public health approach aimed at minimizing the negative effects of consumption without requiring total abstinence—has undoubtedly gained traction in today’s scientific discourse. However, as Clive Bates, one of the most experienced speakers in public policy design, warned, structural barriers continue to hinder the adoption of reduced-risk products: arbitrary nicotine limits, advertising restrictions, bans on oral products such as snus, and an institutional narrative that continues to treat these devices as threats rather than opportunities.
“The EU has created a regulatory environment where innovation is allowed, but communicating that innovation is not,” Bates remarked. The paradox is evident: Alternative devices—such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco—are legally available, yet manufacturers are prohibited from explaining why these products may pose less risk than traditional cigarettes. Thus, the law enforces silence where informed dialogue should prevail.
Consumers: Caught Between Frustration and Stigma
From a consumer-centered perspective, Damian Sweeney gave voice to a group historically sidelined in this debate: smokers who cannot quit through traditional methods. For them, alternatives such as Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) are not magic bullets but potential escape routes.
However, when these alternatives are not accessible, varied, affordable, or attractive—such as when flavors are banned—the likely outcome is not quitting but returning to traditional cigarettes or, worse, fueling the black market.
“Regulation should protect the consumer, not punish their attempt to change,” Sweeney warned, highlighting the often-overlooked human cost of well-intentioned but poorly designed policies.
Rethinking Tobacco Control: A Version 2.0?
Clive Bates proposed a forward-looking model under the banner of Tobacco Control 2.0: a framework rooted in the latest scientific evidence, recognizing risk hierarchies among products and promoting smoking cessation through tangible incentives rather than abstract punishments.
This approach has already yielded concrete results in countries like Sweden, where the widespread use of snus has helped achieve one of Europe’s lowest rates of smoking-related diseases. Similar outcomes are seen in the UK, New Zealand, and Japan, where authorities have adopted more open stances toward emerging harm-reduction technologies.
The implicit critique is explicit: the current Tobacco Products Directive (TPD)—the backbone of EU regulation—urgently needs updating to reflect these new health, technological, and social realities.
Beyond current barriers, Bates also warned of looming threats in future regulations that could undermine the progress made so far: flavor bans, restrictions on oral nicotine formats like pouches, mandatory plain packaging, new taxes, and further limits on advertising.
Instead of incentivizing a shift toward lower-risk products, these measures could drive consumers back to traditional cigarettes or into illicit markets—thus eroding the transformative potential of emerging technologies.
On fiscal policy, Bates noted that while no EU-wide taxes are currently required for reduced-risk products, many member states are implementing their own tax systems, often inconsistent and poorly aligned. A more rational approach, he suggested, would allow countries to design differentiated taxes, including the freedom to apply a zero tax rate for public health reasons.
Just as the Tobacco Excise Directive set minimum standards for cigarettes, a future framework should do the same for reduced-risk products—with a minimum rate starting at zero and never approaching that of combustible tobacco.
Science as the Compass for Regulation
Professor Andrzej Fal was blunt: one cannot legislate from ignorance or prejudice. In his remarks, he proposed that the upcoming revision of the TPD include more sophisticated tools, such as tax structures based on levels of harm—“less harm, lower taxes”—mandatory licensing for retail outlets, and state-mandated clinical studies to determine which products genuinely reduce risk accurately.
This model does not aim to liberalize the tobacco market but instead to regulate it with greater intelligence, rigor, and accountability. A framework that treats traditional cigarettes the same as a potentially 95% less harmful product is not only scientifically untenable but also ethically indefensible.
The Ideological Battleground: Beyond the Smoke
The backdrop is, ultimately, profoundly political. As Bates noted in a post-event interview, many barriers to innovation are not technical but ideological. “Low-risk products are perceived by authorities as a threat, not an opportunity,” he emphasized. And therein lies the heart of the conflict: part of the health system still sees nicotine as a demonic substance, incapable of being part of the solution—even when evidence begins to paint a different picture.
The question, then, is not just what to regulate but how—and, above all, for whom. Public health policy must stop functioning as a moral crusade and start acting as a tool to improve real lives. That requires humility: the ability to revisit paradigms, embrace nuance, and listen not only to experts but also to those who have the most at stake—the consumers themselves.
An Opportunity to Listen
The European Union faces a significant challenge: to regulate firmly without veering into prohibitionism, protect without condescension, and legislate from evidence, not ideology.
The revision of the Tobacco Products Directive is a historic opportunity to open a new chapter in the fight against smoking. One that does not deny the risks but does not ignore the solutions already saving lives elsewhere in the world.
The event's outcome was unequivocal: this is not about redeeming the smoker or absolving the product. It is about abandoning the moral noise that has clouded the tobacco debate for decades—and finally removing the ideological blindfold from the system’s eyes.
It is about looking smokers in the eye—not with pity, but with respect—and offering them more than just prohibitions: offering them the real possibility of choosing a different path.
To truly listen—to those who study these products and, above all, to those who use them—means accepting complexity, nuance, and deviation. It means recognizing that not all change comes from compliance and that sometimes, transformation arrives through impure, imperfect, deeply human routes.
Because public health policy should not speak over people—but alongside them. And to do that, it must first listen. Listen even to what is uncomfortable, what contradicts, what doesn’t quite fit the old playbooks.
Those who still smoke are not stray statistics or disobedient bodies—they are stories that endure. And any policy that hopes to transform those stories cannot be built on guilt. It must begin with listening. From that uneasy place where science and compassion meet—and smoke, at last, stops concealing and starts revealing.
Only then will the European Union be able to legislate not only with evidence but also with humanity, by seeing beyond the smoke.