Consumers have responded to the European Union’s SANT Committee Hearing that believes policy makers need to focus on harm due to cigarettes. These decision-makers are formulating policy on the back of “misinformation” and “innate prejudice towards harm reduction”, according to the World Vapers’ Alliance. The Alliance has also taken aim at The World Health Organization (WHO)’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as he denounced vaping and denied it works to reduce harm.

The SANT (Subcommittee on Public Health) held a hearing on “Preventing non-communicable diseases” to focus on possible solutions, on 1 June.

With nicotine consumption being one of the focus topics of the discussion, it becomes clear that there is still a lot of misinformation and innate prejudice towards harm reduction among the EU decision-makers, says Michael Landl, director of the World Vapers’ Alliance, an association that claims to amplify voices of vapers worldwide.

“While non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, chronic lung illnesses, and cancer should be the cornerstone of the EU public health agenda, it is also crucial to pursue evidence-based and science-based approaches. We need to reduce actual harms and not fight nicotine consumption per se. The real public-health threat comes from cigarette smoking. Alternative products such as snus, vaping, and nicotine pouches are reducing smoking induced illnesses, because they effectively help smokers to quit. Fighting nicotine consumption instead of actual harms will have much more harmful consequences,” said Landl.

Among the addressed misconceptions about the role of harm reduction, stood out comments of MEP González Casares and MEP Trillet-Lenoir.

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