As Brussels weighs its next steps on nicotine policy, three recently released reports by the coalition of leading think tanks Prohibition Does Not Work, offer a clear warning: prohibition does not protect health—it cedes the market to criminals, denies smokers safer alternatives, and makes youth protection harder. The European Union should not repeat this mistake at scale. Instead, it should adopt risk-proportionate, evidence-based harm-reduction rules that cut smoking while shutting out bad actors.
Harm reduction is simple: help people move from the most dangerous form of nicotine—smoked tobacco—to far safer non-combustible options, while preventing youth uptake. The science is settled enough for policymaking: non-combustible products remove combustion, the primary source of disease; authoritative UK evidence reviews estimate vaping to be on the order of 95% less harmful than smoking. That scientific reality is why countries that regulate safer alternatives—rather than banning them—are cutting smoking faster.
In Germany, 1.4 million adults use illegal nicotine pouches, while the decline in smoking rates has stagnated, and Germany continues to have the highest smoking rate in Europe.
Look at Brazil. A nationwide ban has not stopped use; it merely handed a billion-dollar market to organised crime. Despite prohibition, up to 2.9 million people now use e-cigarettes, with seized products showing toxic metals and even fentanyl, and youth use at 8.7%—all while adult smoking has risen from 9.3% (2020) to 11.6% (2024). Prohibition delivered a bigger black market, more risk, and backsliding on tobacco control.
Australia tells the same story from a different route: a de facto ban via prescription and pharmacy-only access starved the legal channel and supercharged the illicit one. Police report over two hundred arson attacks linked to turf wars in the illegal vape/tobacco trade—violence that would be unthinkable around a regulated product—alongside contaminated illicit vapes and rising youth access. In 2023, 14.5% of 14–17-year-olds were current vapers—because criminals don’t do age checks. And as restrictions tightened, smoking began ticking up again—exactly the opposite of public-health intent.
In Germany, 1.4 million adults use illegal nicotine pouches, while the decline in smoking rates has stagnated, and Germany continues to have the highest smoking rate in Europe.
These are not aberrations; they are predictable outcomes of prohibition. Bans create lucrative margins for smugglers, crowd out responsible retailers who follow ID rules, and expose consumers to products with unknown contents. Regulation—done well—does the opposite: it imposes standards, traceability, and accountability, channels adult demand into compliant outlets, and funds enforcement through tax rather than stretching police resources.
The EU’s job is not to criminalise adult smokers who seek less harmful options; it is to reduce avoidable diseasewhile shrinking the illicit market.
For the EU, the lesson is clear. The worst possible step would be an EU-wide prohibition on safer nicotine products. It would replicate Brazil, Germany, and Australia’s failures across the Single Market, enlarge criminal networks, and—by removing substitutes—push some adults back to smoking. Instead, the Union should set a risk-proportionate framework that:
- Legalises and standardises non-combustible products to rigorous product and ingredient specifications;
- Mandates robust age-verification and marketing rules that genuinely reduce youth appeal;
- Empowers enforcement against illicit supply chains.
Germany’s current approach to nicotine pouches—and the human costs documented abroad—should focus minds in Brussels. The EU’s job is not to criminalise adult smokers who seek less harmful options; it is to reduce avoidable disease while shrinking the illicit market. Prohibition cannot do that. Harm-reduction regulation can. Let’s choose the policy that saves lives and starves criminals—not the one that does the reverse.
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