EU plan to ban advertising of e-cigarettes could leave British hands tied after Brexit

THE EU is proposing to ban the advertising and promotion of e-cigarettes, despite UK health authorities claiming they are 95 per cent safer than tobacco products.

New EU wording on the latest working paper on tobacco advertising states that e-cigarettes should not be differentiated from ordinary cigarettes – just weeks after a House of Commons report called for the uptake of vaping to be encouraged in Britain to “save lives”.

The Government recently changed the rules on advertising e-cigarettes, allowing them to appear on television before the 9pm watershed.

Yesterday, Norman Lamb MP, chairman of the Commons science and technology select committee, told MPS: “We call for a shift to a more risk-proportionate regulatory environment, where regulations, advertising rules and tax duties reflect evidence on the relative harms of the various e-cigarettes and tobacco products that are available.”

A report by the committee last month concluded e-cigarettes were “significantly less harmful for a smoker’s health”, citing Public Health England evidence which estimates they are 95 per cent less harmful than smoking.

Yet the latest EU wording states: “Regulatory frameworks on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and their implementation at national, regional and international levels do not only cover all tobacco products, both traditional and emerging ones such as heated tobacco products, but should also consider tobacco-related products such as Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems.”

Vytenis Andriukaitis, the EU commissioner for health and food safety, is a long-standing sceptic of e-cigarettes, and has backed measures to restrict and regulate vaping.

British officials have until the end of today to oppose the EU’S wording. Whitehall bureaucrats will then attempt to influence the process when a consensus will be agreed by the EU Commission in Brussels this month. The British tobacco industry, which also produces e-cigarettes, fears the EU will try to persuade the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) to adopt the ban when it meets to discuss its tobacco treaty in Switzerland at the end of the month.

If restrictions are backed by WHO this will influence the process the UK has to adopt, even post-brexit. Britain has no vote on decisions in Geneva, where the EU Commission collectively represents all member states.