E-cigs lobby hails Dalli’s departure, health groups raise ‘entrapment’ spectre

One of the industries that was to be affected by a review of the Tobacco Products Directive being spearheaded by the John Dalli has come down hard on the former health commissioner of the EU, with a muck-raking blog that illustrates the acrimonious split between tobacco lobbies and health groups in Europe.

A day after the resignation of Dalli over an investigation by the EU's anti-fraud office OLAF, after a former PN councillor used Dalli's name to seek a fee from a Swedish snuff tobacco company to broker a meeting with the commissioner, electronic cigarette lobby ECITA (Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association) set much store in reproducing questionable political episodes from Dalli's career gleaned from the Maltese press and blogs.

Dalli's review of the EU's tobacco laws planned a complete ban on electronic cigarettes and smokeless forms of tobacco such as Swedish snus, which can only be sold in Sweden under an EU dispensation.

Dalli's review planned a ban on the marketing of all electronic cigarettes unless they are authorised as medicinal products - a process that would require the onerous validation from medicinal authorities across Europe.

ECITA's opposition to the review was in part founded by their belief that electronic cigarettes - which vaporize a polyethylene glycol liquid into an aerosol mist to simulate the act smoking - is 99 per cent safer than smoking because it does not include nicotine (according to researchers from Boston University School of Public Health).

This is a market valued at €500 million with 7% of EU citizens believed to have tried e-cigarettes. This fact alone, supporters of such devices claim, flies in the face of 'big pharma' giants who want to protect their business of nicotine replacement chewing gum and patches, whose quitting appeal may be threatened by e-cigarettes. Companies like Novartis are actively involved in lobbying EU lawmakers in promoting nicotine replacement therapy over 'smoke-free' laws.

In the meantime, e-cigarette lobby ECITA has celebrated Dalli's departure by calling on the European Commission to scrap the existing consultation on the Tobacco Products Directive, and restart the process - something that has effectively taken place within the Barroso Commission after it was decided that only a new health commissioner, and not the interim one, should take care of the legal review that Dalli was spearheading.

"One wonders how else they can possibly proceed, if they are to regain any of the credibility they have so publicly lost. If there were any doubt about this, Dalli himself confirmed the utter futility of the Commission's attempt to pursue this consultation, in his own statement: 'I will continue to work so that all efforts made by myself and my services to revise the Tobacco Directive will proceed as planned'.

"Let us hope that in waving goodbye to John Dalli, we can also wave goodbye to the anti-public health agenda he was attempting to enforce."

Less happy where lobbies representing the health industry and anti-smoking charities, who suspect that the complaint by Swedish Match - the Swedish producers of snus - to the European Commission, is vitiated by the very fact that its vice-president Patrik Hildingsson is also the chairman of the European Smokeless Tobacco Council, the lobby which asked former PN councillor Silvio Zammit how much he would charge to set up meeting with Dalli.

As Mariann Skar, the secretary-general of the European Alcohol Policy Alliance commented, "It is sad to see a health Commissioner having to resign because of bribery scandals. But it is very alarming to note that it is Swedish Match was raised the allegations in the first place. They have been fighting for years to get snus into the European market. Are they hoping for a new health commissioner that would support their economic interests?"