In May 2017, Sweden was commended for reaching a smokefree status with its smoking rate dropping to 5%. Fast forward to 2023 and the rate has dropped further, prompting five Members of the European Parliament discuss the successful strategy on the event of World No Tobacco Day.

A recent report highlighted that in the coming months Sweden’s smoking rate will be dropping below 5% and details the approach which led to this success. Anders Milton, one of the report’s authors, highlighted that if other EU countries copied Sweden’s strategy, the situation in Europe would look different.

In fact on the event of World No Tobacco Day on May 31st, MEPs Sara Skyttedal, Johan Nissinen, Tomislav Sokol, Dr Christopher Russel, and Federico N. Fernández, and a group of researchers from global network We Are Innovation, discussed the successful strategy employed by Sweden. This of course is known to have led the nation to achieve the sought after national smoking rate, well ahead of its fellow EU countries.

Meanwhile, the EU has set a goal to achieve this rate by 2040, yet tends to endorse strategies which experts say will be counter productive to reaching it. In fact the average smoking rate across the union remains at around 23%. We Are Innovation conducted research on the factors that helped achieve the impressive smoking rate in Sweden.

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