Just thought I'd post this background info because the current events are fairly confusing and many are asking what it's all about.
The tobacco Products Directive
This document is issued by the EU Health Commission as it comes within their purview. It becomes law and is the overriding legal basis in all EU countries for all matters referred to in the Directive. In other words, if it says Snus is banned, then Snus is legally banned in all of the EU countries no matter what their individual laws may say.
If a country permits activities that are against EU law then they have to pay fines to the EU, and many countries do pay millions every year. A country can continue to flout EU law but it becomes expensive and creates a political issue that most prefer to do without. For example the UK may flout the new EU law that requires prisoners to be allowed the vote, but it will have to pay for the privilege. Only matters that are considered to be core to a country's policy and beliefs will result in EU laws being contravened for any length of time.
The Snus ban
One of the items in an EU tobacco Directive ten years ago was a ban on Snus within the EU. Sweden achieved an exemption to this when they joined the EU, for several reasons. Among these were probably:
- Snus is a local product and a ban would cause economic damage to Sweden.
- Snus is a cultural tradition in Sweden.
- No one could show at that point in time that Snus was harmful.
- It appeared that Sweden did receive some health benefits although these were not conclusively proven at that time.
The Snus ban is in effect re-established every year since no moves are made to repeal it, and new tobacco Product Directives include it. The ban was challenged in court in 2004 but at that time enough scientific data was not available to show sufficient reason to overturn it (in the eyes of the court).
The ban was originally obtained by tobacco control lobbyists although no information is available on who funded them. It may not have been an entirely unreasonable action to take, by some standards, as it stopped a new form of tobacco being introduced that did not have much data available on it. The situation is vastly different now.
Who benefits from the Snus ban now?
Primarily the tobacco industry, next the pharmaceutical industry, and lastly governments.
Tobacco
Tobacco sales in the EU are said to be €100bn a year. Snus represents a major threat to cigarette sales, since it has a proven record of reducing the number of smokers by 45%, and male smokers in particular by 55% (only 11% of Swedes now smoke, and only 8% or 9% of Swedish men smoke, compared to the ~20% average smoking prevalence in comparable countries).
Since only a few Swedish companies would be in the position of being able to supply genuine Snus, almost all other tobacco companies would take a massive hit. Even if other EU countries don't reach the near-50% smoking reduction of Sweden, 25% might be achievable for some of them, and 10% could be guaranteed almost everywhere. A 10% to 25% per cent hit on European cigarette sales is hardly going to be popular with the tobacco industry - that's up to €25bn a year.
Pharma
The golden egg for pharma is their vast drug market for treatments for sick and dying smokers. This $100bn a year or greater industry is a significant proportion of their income. The hugely profitable chemotherapy drugs, COPD drugs, cardiac drugs, vascular drugs and other therapies for ill smokers would take a hit in direct proportion to and eventually equal to the reduction in the number of smokers, since Snus doesn't elevate risk for any disease and a smoker who switches to Snus has a negligible statistical risk of different health outcomes from a smoker who totally quits (in layman's language: Snus doesn't cause any disease, it's the same as totally quitting). Snus consumption is demonstrated to involve an average risk of reduction of expected lifespan of 4 weeks, which is probably about the same as drinking coffee (although it could even be less), compared to the reduction in lifespan for a smoker of about 8 years.
There is of course a timelag between risky health behaviours, or the cessation of such behaviours, and the visible effect on health. It may take two decades to see the effect of smokers switching en masse to Snus, so pharma's drug income would be safe for a period of at least a decade before it began to crash.
Of more immediate effect although of far less value is pharma's income from NRTs and associated pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation. This is only a $1bn annual global market but still of some concern, especially as it takes an immediate hit as soon as any new and effective THR product comes on the market. Every smoker who switches to Snus is a lost customer for pharma; and additional sales are also lost because people are well aware that Snus works and NRTs don't: Snus is proven to cut smoking in a given country by approaching 50%, whereas the best any pharmaceutical interventions have ever managed in total might be around 1%.
Pharma has as much to lose as the tobacco industry and will fight just as hard to protect their income. Indeed, some suggest that 9 out or 10 voices raised against tobacco harm reduction are funded directly or indirectly by pharma. Pharma will protect their drug trade at any cost. They are now in the position the tobacco industry used to be in: lying profusely throught their propaganda front groups in order to protect their income.
Governments
Eventually, governments everywhere will lose a fortune in taxes due to e-cigarettes. The same applies in slightly lower proportion to Snus, which is at least a tobacco product that could have tobacco taxes applied to it (without any justification, though, if health issues are the basis for a 'sin tax').
It doesn't really look as if they have woken up to this timebomb yet, though, so government complicity in the Snus ban is most likely due to other reasons such as influence on specific officials.
Front groups
Pseudo-health pressure groups, perhaps in the past, used to operate on behalf of the public in order to protect public health. This is no longer the case and they are funded by industries who dictate the policy these groups operate to.
The organisations with the worst reputation of all are the US propaganda and pressure groups who operate almost exclusively to an agenda dictated by their funders, the pharmaceutical industry; for all practical purposes they are pharma front groups. In 2010 pharma registered a lobbying spend of $240m, so we can see that almost unlimited funds are available.
Any possible health benefit these groups provided in the past has now been perverted and it is no longer possible to separate what is done for the public good from what is dictated by the people who pay their wages: pharma. Enormous salaries are paid to the directors of these groups to ensure they toe the line ($0.75m a year for a CEO of one of these organsations has been reported), directors receive six-figure remuneration, and several have boards with over 100 'directors'. Huge amounts of money are paid by pharma to ensure loyalty. The fiercest opponents to ecigs come from these groups, as can be expected, since every convert to THR or anything similar is an NRT customer immediately lost and a future sick smoker lost.
Perhaps it is possible to calculate what the average smoker is worth to pharma - it shouldn't be too hard to do in a small country like the UK that has a national health service that pays for all treatment unless private arrangements are preferred. Let's run the numbers:
Total number of smokers in the UK: about 13m, if it is 19% of the population of 69m. (The number of smokers given is frequently much lower than this, but since at least 10% of tobacco sales are now black market, no faith can be placed in official statistics in this area.)
Cost to the NHS to treat sick smokers annually: the projected cost is £3bn this year.
Proportion of cost attributable to drug costs: 50% (Lower estimates of the drug costs are seen, but in every case where the cost of treatments to the NHS is closely inspected it is found that some drug costs have been deliberately hidden - therefore there is no reason to suppose that the figure of 40% often quoted for this proportion of costs is an honest one, since other examples examined are clearly dishonest. The 'cost of treating smoking cessation, per successful subject' is one blatant example.)
This gives us £1.5bn annual cost to the NHS for 13m smokers, which resolves to an annual value to pharma per smoker of £115.
Add to this private treatments, less-visible earnings such as hospitalisation income from private care, high street medicine purchases, and NRT sales; the total per smoker probably rises to about £150 a year or $240.
So, every UK smoker - all 13 million of them - is worth $240 a year to pharma.
Pharma will do whatever it takes to protect that income. The influence of the US front groups spreads around the world, although their activities are nowhere as blatant as in the US. In the UK they are distinctly muted as pharma prefers to pay individual medics to do their propaganda work, things are on a much smaller scale and public lobbying is not as successful. In the EU these groups are centred around Brussels as that's where the money needs to be spent.
John Dalli
So this is the background to current events: a ban on a 'new' form of tobacco (though used in Sweden for a hundred years or more), and the people who benefit from it.
Dalli was the EU Health Commissioner or chair of the EU Health Commission, the committee that decides EU policy in the health area. Earlier this week it emerged that EU head man Barroso had, in effect, sacked Dalli. This was said to be due to a bribery scandal.
Various other details then emerged:
- Barroso forced Dalli out immediately he received a report from the EU's internal fraud investigation office, the OLAF.
- The report stated that although a known close associate of Dalli had attempted to extract a bribe from a Snus manufacturer, Dalli had not reported it even though he says he knew of it and it did not involve him.
- On the face of it, there does not seem enough evidence to immediately remove Dalli even though he is obviously implicated to some extent.
- It appears that Barroso knows more about this affair (or previous incidents) than has been revealed, and clearly wanted to get rid of Dalli at the earliest opportunity. Barroso has a clean reputation in the EU, in direct contrast to Dalli.
- The first statement issued appeared to be a personal resignation by Dalli, proffering his resignation in his own words; but this turned out to be a press release issued by the President, with Dalli's personal statement in fact constructed by Barroso and without Dalli's knowledge.
- Interesting details of EU internal regulations have emerged, such as that if the President sacks a Commissioner then there is no appeal; that a sacked Commissioner loses significant financial benefits; that if a Commissioner instead resigns, he keeps those benefits.
- Dalli eventually agreed to his 'resignation', probably for financial reasons.
Dalli's personal record
ECITA did some excellent research on Dalli's financial background. It appears he has been surrounded by 'unconventional financial incidents' for many years. One of the most famous was when he privately arranged the sale of one of Malta's most critical banks, that controlled 50% of the economy, for a knockdown price, while the president was in hospital recovering from a heart attack.
The Snus ban is now known to have no basis in science, since Snus doesn't cause any disease, and its consumption has negligible risks. In order that ban stays in place, and smoking can be maintained at its current level, with attendant profits to tobacco and pharma that measure in the hundreds of millions annually, it is assumed (allegedly) that tobacco and pharma worked together to ensure Dalli kept the faith. The benefits to a compliant EU Commissioner would be measured in millions or perhaps even tens of millions, if such allegations were true.
Dalli's brother is a known international criminal, and has been involved in some notable affairs such as the 'water into wine' incident: a shipping container of bottled water imported by him, when opened by Malta customs, turned out to be whisky, spirits and wine, thus avoiding hundreds of thousands in duty. The importer claimed no knowledge of the alcohol at all, prompting comments on the miraculous conversion of the water into wine.
Silvio Zammit
This person, rumoured to be Dalli's personal fixer, is at the centre of the bribery scandal. He is alleged to have asked for a bribe of €60m to abate the Snus ban (€10m in advance). At first the sum seems fairly high but on the other hand, Dalli probably doesn't carry the committee vote single-handedly and would need to arrange the 'influencing' of other committee members. Extremely large sums of money are at stake and the men at the centre of these policy decisions are very wealthy.
Two entirely theoretical scenarios are possible:
1. Allegedly and hypothetically: Dalli would do nothing about the ban, and keep the advance payment on the bribe. Pharma and tobacco might allegedly be paying him a considerable amount per year (certainly millions), so the loss of the €50m second installment of the bribe would not be catastrophic. The Snus people couldn't complain publicly about a €10m first installment of a bribe paid with no results. Dalli keeps the €10m (minus costs) and keeps the annual pharma/tobacco payments.
2. Allegedly and hypothetically: Dalli decides it's time to retire as he has millions in the bank by now (one of his hidden offshore accounts was recently exposed). He takes the bribe advance payment, fixes the Snus ban, and takes the €50m bulk payment of the bribe. Even if they don't pay the second installment he has done OK, especially if he had promised his associates their reward out of the second payment. He loses the annual benefits from tobacco and pharma to keep the lid on Snus, but makes enough to cover the loss for several years. He can always exert pressure later if they don't pay. He has a lot of explaining to do, but there is plenty of solid material to use: the evidence base is now entirely against a ban; the ban kills thousands of EU citizens every year; and new legal challenges may be just around the corner. Plus, he might be 'convinced' by other committee members that the time is right to remove the ban.
These are hypothetical scenarios of course. No one is suggesting that an EU Commissioner is bent. There are probably very good reasons why the EU should kill at least 70,000 of its citizens every year by preventing access to Snus, although none are immediately apparent.
The burglaries
The day after Dalli's exit, a building in Brussels where several of the EU pharma front groups are located was burgled. Computers were stolen from three of these groups. There are significant reasons why this is considered to be a pro job instead of a random burglary (the sophistication of the alarm defeat methods, the theft of only computer-related equipment and ignoring of other valuables, the selection of only pharma front groups while other offices in the building were ignored apart from the office of a group with an opposing agenda, etc).
The thefts are a mystery, but the motive seems on the surface to point at big tobacco since the target appears to be documentation related to the new tobacco directive. However, it would then need to be explained how two industries that have a very simple and identical agenda (maintain the status quo and protect smoking) and who almost certainly have mutually-agreed operational agreements in place have fallen out and are burgling each other. Why tobacco needs to burgle pharma has not been explained, when they are working toward the same goal. There would appear to be some other motive.
The EU Tobacco Directive
Another Maltese commissioner will replace Dalli and it will be back to business as usual. The Directive is expected to be delayed yet again (it is delayed all the time as a result of the haggling between the interested parties), and perhaps will not be seen for another six months.
We can expect that:
- Since ecigs will cost pharma and tobacco a vast fortune, they are extremely unlikely to take that lying down. They will attempt to kill ecigs whatever the cost, even if it runs to $100m in 'payments', because they stand to lose a great deal more than that.
- If they don't kill ecigs at EU level, the job is not only vastly more expensive (payments to officials in every one of the 27 countries instead of just one bung at the top level), but will be impossible in some countries as the courts cannot be bought. Bans have already been overturned in Holland and Germany.
- Even if they decide that an outright ban would be impossible to maintain when challenged in the EU Supreme Court, they will take the FDA option and go for a ban by the back door: regulations that will strangle ecigs.
Ecigs can't be classified as a medical product since there are no sound legal arguments for this that will stand up to challenge. This infers a Tobacco Directive that contains elements such as classification of ecigs as a tobacco product, a truly disastrous result since it means all tobacco regulations and taxes can be applied: no advertising, possibly no web sales, strict regulation of all sorts of aspects that could easily be used to remove ecigs by strangulation (cartos only, no refills, low nic only, etc), and punitive taxes.
All this will take time, and just as in the USA, nothing is going to happen in the immediate future. When it does, it won't be good: there is far too much money at stake to let health issues have any weight. There are plenty of reasons to believe that EU administration is corrupt as well as being, more obviously, incompetent; above all, EU citizens have little or no say in their governance.
The tobacco Products Directive
This document is issued by the EU Health Commission as it comes within their purview. It becomes law and is the overriding legal basis in all EU countries for all matters referred to in the Directive. In other words, if it says Snus is banned, then Snus is legally banned in all of the EU countries no matter what their individual laws may say.
If a country permits activities that are against EU law then they have to pay fines to the EU, and many countries do pay millions every year. A country can continue to flout EU law but it becomes expensive and creates a political issue that most prefer to do without. For example the UK may flout the new EU law that requires prisoners to be allowed the vote, but it will have to pay for the privilege. Only matters that are considered to be core to a country's policy and beliefs will result in EU laws being contravened for any length of time.
The Snus ban
One of the items in an EU tobacco Directive ten years ago was a ban on Snus within the EU. Sweden achieved an exemption to this when they joined the EU, for several reasons. Among these were probably:
- Snus is a local product and a ban would cause economic damage to Sweden.
- Snus is a cultural tradition in Sweden.
- No one could show at that point in time that Snus was harmful.
- It appeared that Sweden did receive some health benefits although these were not conclusively proven at that time.
The Snus ban is in effect re-established every year since no moves are made to repeal it, and new tobacco Product Directives include it. The ban was challenged in court in 2004 but at that time enough scientific data was not available to show sufficient reason to overturn it (in the eyes of the court).
The ban was originally obtained by tobacco control lobbyists although no information is available on who funded them. It may not have been an entirely unreasonable action to take, by some standards, as it stopped a new form of tobacco being introduced that did not have much data available on it. The situation is vastly different now.
Who benefits from the Snus ban now?
Primarily the tobacco industry, next the pharmaceutical industry, and lastly governments.
Tobacco
Tobacco sales in the EU are said to be €100bn a year. Snus represents a major threat to cigarette sales, since it has a proven record of reducing the number of smokers by 45%, and male smokers in particular by 55% (only 11% of Swedes now smoke, and only 8% or 9% of Swedish men smoke, compared to the ~20% average smoking prevalence in comparable countries).
Since only a few Swedish companies would be in the position of being able to supply genuine Snus, almost all other tobacco companies would take a massive hit. Even if other EU countries don't reach the near-50% smoking reduction of Sweden, 25% might be achievable for some of them, and 10% could be guaranteed almost everywhere. A 10% to 25% per cent hit on European cigarette sales is hardly going to be popular with the tobacco industry - that's up to €25bn a year.
Pharma
The golden egg for pharma is their vast drug market for treatments for sick and dying smokers. This $100bn a year or greater industry is a significant proportion of their income. The hugely profitable chemotherapy drugs, COPD drugs, cardiac drugs, vascular drugs and other therapies for ill smokers would take a hit in direct proportion to and eventually equal to the reduction in the number of smokers, since Snus doesn't elevate risk for any disease and a smoker who switches to Snus has a negligible statistical risk of different health outcomes from a smoker who totally quits (in layman's language: Snus doesn't cause any disease, it's the same as totally quitting). Snus consumption is demonstrated to involve an average risk of reduction of expected lifespan of 4 weeks, which is probably about the same as drinking coffee (although it could even be less), compared to the reduction in lifespan for a smoker of about 8 years.
There is of course a timelag between risky health behaviours, or the cessation of such behaviours, and the visible effect on health. It may take two decades to see the effect of smokers switching en masse to Snus, so pharma's drug income would be safe for a period of at least a decade before it began to crash.
Of more immediate effect although of far less value is pharma's income from NRTs and associated pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation. This is only a $1bn annual global market but still of some concern, especially as it takes an immediate hit as soon as any new and effective THR product comes on the market. Every smoker who switches to Snus is a lost customer for pharma; and additional sales are also lost because people are well aware that Snus works and NRTs don't: Snus is proven to cut smoking in a given country by approaching 50%, whereas the best any pharmaceutical interventions have ever managed in total might be around 1%.
Pharma has as much to lose as the tobacco industry and will fight just as hard to protect their income. Indeed, some suggest that 9 out or 10 voices raised against tobacco harm reduction are funded directly or indirectly by pharma. Pharma will protect their drug trade at any cost. They are now in the position the tobacco industry used to be in: lying profusely throught their propaganda front groups in order to protect their income.
Governments
Eventually, governments everywhere will lose a fortune in taxes due to e-cigarettes. The same applies in slightly lower proportion to Snus, which is at least a tobacco product that could have tobacco taxes applied to it (without any justification, though, if health issues are the basis for a 'sin tax').
It doesn't really look as if they have woken up to this timebomb yet, though, so government complicity in the Snus ban is most likely due to other reasons such as influence on specific officials.
Front groups
Pseudo-health pressure groups, perhaps in the past, used to operate on behalf of the public in order to protect public health. This is no longer the case and they are funded by industries who dictate the policy these groups operate to.
The organisations with the worst reputation of all are the US propaganda and pressure groups who operate almost exclusively to an agenda dictated by their funders, the pharmaceutical industry; for all practical purposes they are pharma front groups. In 2010 pharma registered a lobbying spend of $240m, so we can see that almost unlimited funds are available.
Any possible health benefit these groups provided in the past has now been perverted and it is no longer possible to separate what is done for the public good from what is dictated by the people who pay their wages: pharma. Enormous salaries are paid to the directors of these groups to ensure they toe the line ($0.75m a year for a CEO of one of these organsations has been reported), directors receive six-figure remuneration, and several have boards with over 100 'directors'. Huge amounts of money are paid by pharma to ensure loyalty. The fiercest opponents to ecigs come from these groups, as can be expected, since every convert to THR or anything similar is an NRT customer immediately lost and a future sick smoker lost.
Perhaps it is possible to calculate what the average smoker is worth to pharma - it shouldn't be too hard to do in a small country like the UK that has a national health service that pays for all treatment unless private arrangements are preferred. Let's run the numbers:
Total number of smokers in the UK: about 13m, if it is 19% of the population of 69m. (The number of smokers given is frequently much lower than this, but since at least 10% of tobacco sales are now black market, no faith can be placed in official statistics in this area.)
Cost to the NHS to treat sick smokers annually: the projected cost is £3bn this year.
Proportion of cost attributable to drug costs: 50% (Lower estimates of the drug costs are seen, but in every case where the cost of treatments to the NHS is closely inspected it is found that some drug costs have been deliberately hidden - therefore there is no reason to suppose that the figure of 40% often quoted for this proportion of costs is an honest one, since other examples examined are clearly dishonest. The 'cost of treating smoking cessation, per successful subject' is one blatant example.)
This gives us £1.5bn annual cost to the NHS for 13m smokers, which resolves to an annual value to pharma per smoker of £115.
Add to this private treatments, less-visible earnings such as hospitalisation income from private care, high street medicine purchases, and NRT sales; the total per smoker probably rises to about £150 a year or $240.
So, every UK smoker - all 13 million of them - is worth $240 a year to pharma.
Pharma will do whatever it takes to protect that income. The influence of the US front groups spreads around the world, although their activities are nowhere as blatant as in the US. In the UK they are distinctly muted as pharma prefers to pay individual medics to do their propaganda work, things are on a much smaller scale and public lobbying is not as successful. In the EU these groups are centred around Brussels as that's where the money needs to be spent.
John Dalli
So this is the background to current events: a ban on a 'new' form of tobacco (though used in Sweden for a hundred years or more), and the people who benefit from it.
Dalli was the EU Health Commissioner or chair of the EU Health Commission, the committee that decides EU policy in the health area. Earlier this week it emerged that EU head man Barroso had, in effect, sacked Dalli. This was said to be due to a bribery scandal.
Various other details then emerged:
- Barroso forced Dalli out immediately he received a report from the EU's internal fraud investigation office, the OLAF.
- The report stated that although a known close associate of Dalli had attempted to extract a bribe from a Snus manufacturer, Dalli had not reported it even though he says he knew of it and it did not involve him.
- On the face of it, there does not seem enough evidence to immediately remove Dalli even though he is obviously implicated to some extent.
- It appears that Barroso knows more about this affair (or previous incidents) than has been revealed, and clearly wanted to get rid of Dalli at the earliest opportunity. Barroso has a clean reputation in the EU, in direct contrast to Dalli.
- The first statement issued appeared to be a personal resignation by Dalli, proffering his resignation in his own words; but this turned out to be a press release issued by the President, with Dalli's personal statement in fact constructed by Barroso and without Dalli's knowledge.
- Interesting details of EU internal regulations have emerged, such as that if the President sacks a Commissioner then there is no appeal; that a sacked Commissioner loses significant financial benefits; that if a Commissioner instead resigns, he keeps those benefits.
- Dalli eventually agreed to his 'resignation', probably for financial reasons.
Dalli's personal record
ECITA did some excellent research on Dalli's financial background. It appears he has been surrounded by 'unconventional financial incidents' for many years. One of the most famous was when he privately arranged the sale of one of Malta's most critical banks, that controlled 50% of the economy, for a knockdown price, while the president was in hospital recovering from a heart attack.
The Snus ban is now known to have no basis in science, since Snus doesn't cause any disease, and its consumption has negligible risks. In order that ban stays in place, and smoking can be maintained at its current level, with attendant profits to tobacco and pharma that measure in the hundreds of millions annually, it is assumed (allegedly) that tobacco and pharma worked together to ensure Dalli kept the faith. The benefits to a compliant EU Commissioner would be measured in millions or perhaps even tens of millions, if such allegations were true.
Dalli's brother is a known international criminal, and has been involved in some notable affairs such as the 'water into wine' incident: a shipping container of bottled water imported by him, when opened by Malta customs, turned out to be whisky, spirits and wine, thus avoiding hundreds of thousands in duty. The importer claimed no knowledge of the alcohol at all, prompting comments on the miraculous conversion of the water into wine.
Silvio Zammit
This person, rumoured to be Dalli's personal fixer, is at the centre of the bribery scandal. He is alleged to have asked for a bribe of €60m to abate the Snus ban (€10m in advance). At first the sum seems fairly high but on the other hand, Dalli probably doesn't carry the committee vote single-handedly and would need to arrange the 'influencing' of other committee members. Extremely large sums of money are at stake and the men at the centre of these policy decisions are very wealthy.
Two entirely theoretical scenarios are possible:
1. Allegedly and hypothetically: Dalli would do nothing about the ban, and keep the advance payment on the bribe. Pharma and tobacco might allegedly be paying him a considerable amount per year (certainly millions), so the loss of the €50m second installment of the bribe would not be catastrophic. The Snus people couldn't complain publicly about a €10m first installment of a bribe paid with no results. Dalli keeps the €10m (minus costs) and keeps the annual pharma/tobacco payments.
2. Allegedly and hypothetically: Dalli decides it's time to retire as he has millions in the bank by now (one of his hidden offshore accounts was recently exposed). He takes the bribe advance payment, fixes the Snus ban, and takes the €50m bulk payment of the bribe. Even if they don't pay the second installment he has done OK, especially if he had promised his associates their reward out of the second payment. He loses the annual benefits from tobacco and pharma to keep the lid on Snus, but makes enough to cover the loss for several years. He can always exert pressure later if they don't pay. He has a lot of explaining to do, but there is plenty of solid material to use: the evidence base is now entirely against a ban; the ban kills thousands of EU citizens every year; and new legal challenges may be just around the corner. Plus, he might be 'convinced' by other committee members that the time is right to remove the ban.
These are hypothetical scenarios of course. No one is suggesting that an EU Commissioner is bent. There are probably very good reasons why the EU should kill at least 70,000 of its citizens every year by preventing access to Snus, although none are immediately apparent.
The burglaries
The day after Dalli's exit, a building in Brussels where several of the EU pharma front groups are located was burgled. Computers were stolen from three of these groups. There are significant reasons why this is considered to be a pro job instead of a random burglary (the sophistication of the alarm defeat methods, the theft of only computer-related equipment and ignoring of other valuables, the selection of only pharma front groups while other offices in the building were ignored apart from the office of a group with an opposing agenda, etc).
The thefts are a mystery, but the motive seems on the surface to point at big tobacco since the target appears to be documentation related to the new tobacco directive. However, it would then need to be explained how two industries that have a very simple and identical agenda (maintain the status quo and protect smoking) and who almost certainly have mutually-agreed operational agreements in place have fallen out and are burgling each other. Why tobacco needs to burgle pharma has not been explained, when they are working toward the same goal. There would appear to be some other motive.
The EU Tobacco Directive
Another Maltese commissioner will replace Dalli and it will be back to business as usual. The Directive is expected to be delayed yet again (it is delayed all the time as a result of the haggling between the interested parties), and perhaps will not be seen for another six months.
We can expect that:
- Since ecigs will cost pharma and tobacco a vast fortune, they are extremely unlikely to take that lying down. They will attempt to kill ecigs whatever the cost, even if it runs to $100m in 'payments', because they stand to lose a great deal more than that.
- If they don't kill ecigs at EU level, the job is not only vastly more expensive (payments to officials in every one of the 27 countries instead of just one bung at the top level), but will be impossible in some countries as the courts cannot be bought. Bans have already been overturned in Holland and Germany.
- Even if they decide that an outright ban would be impossible to maintain when challenged in the EU Supreme Court, they will take the FDA option and go for a ban by the back door: regulations that will strangle ecigs.
Ecigs can't be classified as a medical product since there are no sound legal arguments for this that will stand up to challenge. This infers a Tobacco Directive that contains elements such as classification of ecigs as a tobacco product, a truly disastrous result since it means all tobacco regulations and taxes can be applied: no advertising, possibly no web sales, strict regulation of all sorts of aspects that could easily be used to remove ecigs by strangulation (cartos only, no refills, low nic only, etc), and punitive taxes.
All this will take time, and just as in the USA, nothing is going to happen in the immediate future. When it does, it won't be good: there is far too much money at stake to let health issues have any weight. There are plenty of reasons to believe that EU administration is corrupt as well as being, more obviously, incompetent; above all, EU citizens have little or no say in their governance.
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