EU stance softens: Global tobacco control faces changing situation

Core Insights:
The subtle but crucial softening of the EU’s stance on new nicotine products on the eve of COP11 marks a shift in global tobacco control strategies from ideologically driven ‘one size fits all’ bans to a more pragmatic, evidence-based, and acknowledging national differences regulatory paradigm. This not only provides valuable policy space for harm reduction strategies, but also indicates that future global regulatory debates will become more complex and diverse.
Driving factors:

1. Strong public and political pressure: The pan European public consultation received over 13000 opinions, especially from member states represented by Sweden, who strongly opposed strict taxes and bans that treated harm reducing products equally with traditional cigarettes based on actual data (smoking rate reduced to 5%) and public opinion, forcing the EU bureaucracy to recalibrate its tough stance.
2. The success and failure of real-world policies: The experience of countries such as Denmark shows that extreme measures such as taste bans only foster black markets and harm public health. At the same time, countries such as Sweden, Japan, and New Zealand have achieved significant reductions in smoking rates by supporting new nicotine products, providing strong evidence for adopting differentiated regulation.
3. Changes in the global regulatory environment: The reauthorization of market access for Juul products by the US FDA, as well as successful practices in the field of harm reduction in other countries, collectively constitute a changing global narrative. This poses a risk of isolation and appearing outdated if the EU continues to adhere to its absolute ban line.
4. Return of scientific evidence and rational discourse: Although the EU draft still holds a reserved attitude towards harm reduction discourse, the new text explicitly mentions “proportionality, scientific evidence, emission data, and real-world impact analysis”, indicating that the decision-making balance is shifting from emotional “prevention principles” to more rational risk assessment.
   Key evidence:
   Change in key wording: The new draft text has removed language describing non combustible products as “extremely harmful” and explicitly requires policy-making to refer to “proportionality, scientific evidence, emission data, and real-world impact analysis”.
   Decentralization of regulatory authority: In response to the previously mandatory “taste restrictions”, the new draft adjusts it to “empowering countries to make their own decisions”, which directly recognizes the differences and autonomy of policies among member states, especially of great significance to countries such as Sweden.
   Specific public opinion data: In the public consultation on nicotine taxation, “over 13000 comments were officially submitted,” quantifying the public pressure against harsh policies.
   Successful precedents of member states: The original text clearly states that in Sweden, products such as snuff and nicotine bags have “pushed smoking rates close to 5%”, which is direct evidence of the effectiveness of harm reduction strategies.
   Strategic insights:
   The strategic significance of the EU’s policy adjustment this time goes far beyond the text itself. It reveals that even large transnational bureaucratic systems must demonstrate flexibility in the face of strong public opinion, real data from member states, and a changing global landscape. This injects key variables into the upcoming COP11 negotiations in Geneva, transforming what was originally thought to be a “pre script” confrontation into negotiations with real game space. In the future, the regulatory path for nicotine products worldwide will no longer be determined by a single template, but will be shaped by the complex interaction between science, public opinion, and national realism.