Health fears voiced over loss of EU leaf from blends

In asking a number of questions about the state of leaf tobacco production in the EU, the Hungarian member of the European parliament, Norbert Erdős, has again raised the issue of whether certain types of cigarettes are less harmful than are others. Such issues are more usually raised in respect of genuine as opposed to counterfeit cigarettes.

In a preamble to three written questions for the European Commission, Erdős said that it was well-known that EU producing countries grew smaller quantities of better quality tobacco than did the major exporting countries of the developing world. He said that production in the EU was more stable and the tobacco more easily traceable. And he said that these characteristics mitigated the health consequences of smoking.

‘As part of the reform of the CAP [Common Agricultural Policy], contrary to the opinion of the European Parliament, the Commission has brought about a total halt to EU support for tobacco production from 2015,’ Erdős wrote. ‘European tobacco production, which takes place under controlled conditions, will fall significantly, and so imports of tobacco products from outside the EU, produced with fewer controls, as well as illegal imports, may increase significantly.

‘I therefore have the following questions for the Commission:

1. ‘What effect will the halting of EU subsidies for tobacco production have on smoking and on public health? How does the Commission propose to prevent imports of less tightly controlled or illegally imported tobacco from gaining ground?
2. ‘How will the Commission guarantee that generic (neutral) packaging does not lead to a price war between processers, who will do anything to maintain their market position, pushing down procurement prices for raw materials, thus squeezing out better quality tobacco?
3. ‘How does the Commission propose to resolve the issue of employing the (mostly unskilled) people who have lost their jobs thanks to the phasing out of tobacco production?’

According to Erdős, tobacco production provides a livelihood to 80,000 growers and employs 350,000 seasonal workers every year, most of them in poor regions of Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain.