For years, the European Commission has insisted that nicotine is nicotine, and that every form of it is as deadly as the last. Then the European Parliament published its own chart of smoking rates across the bloc and put a hole in its own argument. Sweden sits alone at the bottom, the first EU country to pass the 5 per cent smoke-free target, fifteen years before the 2040 deadline. The EU average is 24 per cent. Six countries still sit above 35.
That chart is more than a statistic. It is the first time a major EU institution has formally recognised Sweden as smoke-free. And the gap is still widening. The latest figures from the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs show daily smoking has now fallen to just 3.7 per cent.
Sweden did not get there by banning its way to victory. It got there by letting smokers move to nicotine without the smoke. Snus first, then vapes and pouches. The crucial detail is what Swedes did not do. They did not set it on fire. Swedes consume nicotine at roughly the European average, yet Sweden records 41 per cent fewer cancer cases and 44 per cent lower tobacco-related mortality than the EU average. Same nicotine. Far fewer funerals.
That one comparison dismantles the official EU line. If nicotine itself were the killer, Sweden would be burying people at the EU rate. It is not. The form nicotine is consumed matters far more than the nicotine itself. Combustion is the problem.
When a Commissioner tells smokers that switching does not cut their health risk, smokers keep smoking
So what does Brussels do with the facts and numbers sitting in front of it? It attacks them.
In December, Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi told Euractiv he was one hundred per cent convinced that vaping, pouches and heated tobacco are as harmful as cigarettes. He has claimed vaping causes popcorn lung, a condition with zero known cases linked to e-cigarettes, caused by a chemical already banned in legal EU vapes. This is not a slip. It is a pattern, repeated in committee, on X, and in formal answers to Parliament.
In February, 23 of Europe's most senior scientists in tobacco and nicotine research wrote to President von der Leyen. They did not soften it. They called the Commission's position damaging misinformation and scientifically untenable. These are professors of medicine, epidemiology and toxicology. They built the evidence that the Commission is now ignoring.
Their warning is plain. When a Commissioner tells smokers that switching does not cut their health risk, smokers keep smoking. The lie protects cigarettes. It removes one of the main reasons a smoker has to change. Misinformation from the top of the EU does not just confuse people; it keeps them on the deadliest product on the market.
The form nicotine is consumed matters far more than the nicotine itself
A smoker in Bulgaria, where more than a third of adults still smoke, should have access to the same vapes and pouches as someone in Sweden. The products exist. The option to switch is there. But when the continent's top health official tells them those products are just as deadly as cigarettes, why would they bother? That is what misinformation from the top does. It does not just get the science wrong. It takes away motivation to change. For every smoker who stays on cigarettes because they believe switching makes no difference, the Commission's false reassurance is doing the work that nobody else could do.
The Tobacco Products Directive evaluation follows the same pattern: it admits the EU is missing its own smoke-free target, then signals flavour bans and tighter rules on the very products closing the gap. The Commission has now opened a public consultation on revising EU tobacco rules, built on the same flawed arguments. It is so visibly biased and predetermined that consumers and consumer organisations are boycotting it rather than lend it the credibility it has not earned.
The EU has gone down the path of prohibition before. It banned snus in 1992 and granted Sweden an exemption. Twenty million Europeans have died from smoking since, while Sweden went on to record the lowest smoking-related death toll on the continent. Brussels watched the experiment run for thirty years and learned nothing.
Sign up to The Parliament's weekly newsletter
Every Friday our editorial team goes behind the headlines to offer insight and analysis on the key stories driving the EU agenda. Subscribe for free here.