Commission’s e-cigarette proposals under attack from EU health experts

Health experts from across the EU are trying to galvanize opposition to the European Commission’s latest proposals for regulating electronic cigarettes, ahead of a crucial meeting in Brussels on Dec. 3.

The European Parliament has already voted down a commission proposal aimed at introducing—as part of revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive—medicines regulation for e-cigarettes. MEPs were in favor of applying consumer regulation to these products.

But the latest proposal is seen merely as medicines regulation by the back door.

Thirteen health experts from Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Poland and the U.K. have written a letter warning that the latest commission proposals could bring to an end the positive effect that safer e-cigarettes have had in weaning smokers from tobacco cigarettes, which caused 700,000 premature deaths a year in the EU.

The letter, whose first signature is that of professor Gerry Stimson, emeritus professor, Imperial College London, is due to be published in the Financial Times.