EU Approves Restrictions on Cigarettes

The European Parliament adopted stringent laws Tuesday that will force cigarette makers to reduce their products’ tar and nicotine levels and encourage graphic packaging to shock smokers into quitting.

The legislation also bans the use of what European Union officials contend are misleading terms, such as “mild” and “light,” even if those words are part of a brand’s registered trademark. That will make it illegal within the EU to sell brands such as Philip Morris’ “Marlboro Lights” and the “Mild Seven” cigarettes produced by JT International of Japan.

The legislation authors propose that larger warning labels carry such straight talk as “Smoking kills,” “Protect children: Don’t make them breathe your smoke” and “Smoking can lead to long and painful death.”

The legislation also encourages national health ministries to require cigarette manufacturers to include prominently on the packaging pictures of discolored teeth, diseased lungs and limbs amputated from smokers whose habit starved their extremities of oxygen.

Cigarette makers have vowed to contest the laws, claiming they violate their property rights and threaten shareholder interests.

EU administrators in Brussels have long sought a bloc-wide ban on cigarette advertising, and the measures approved by the Parliament are seen as a mandate for further EU restrictions on smoking and its promotion within the 15 member states. About 33% of the region’s adult population smokes cigarette, compared with 22.7% of American adults.

Smoking remains pandemic in Europe, despite highly educated and literate populations that are as aware as U.S. citizens are of the health damage inflicted on smokers and those around them. Only last year, smoking was forbidden in public offices and facilities such as airports in Germany and Finland. There is still little enforcement of smoking bans.

Nonsmoking areas in European restaurants remain rare, as do affordable hotel rooms solely for nonsmokers.

“I want to reduce the number of smokers in Europe from the current one-third of the population to one-fifth,” David Byrne, the EU commissioner for health and consumer protection, told the lawmakers.

About 500,000 EU citizens die each year of smoking-related illnesses. “That’s one person every minute,” Byrne said.

Byrne tried to get an advertising ban approved last fall but was hindered by an industry legal challenge backed by the German government. But most EU states have begun taking a more aggressive approach to deterring smoking, especially among the young, who have easy access to cigarette vending machines.

The restrictions affect all cigarettes made and sold in the member states. U.S. manufacturers do not export extensively to Europe because of the continent’s tariff laws, but the measures will affect the companies’ European subsidiaries.

The tough new measures also could have consequences for Eastern Europe and other non-EU states where smoking is even more prevalent, because the rules forbid the export to third countries of cigarettes that fail to meet the stricter content conditions. That could mean plummeting sales of EU tobacco products as manufacturers compete against cigarettes that give smokers a more powerful nicotine hit and raise prices to cover the cost of new restrictions.

As of January 2004, cigarettes sold within the EU or authorized for export will have a maximum per cigarette of 10 milligrams of tar, 1 milligram of nicotine and 10 milligrams of carbon monoxide. There are no legal limits on tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields in U.S.-made cigarettes.

Although long anticipated, the new rules prompted a strong reaction from the industry.

The rules reducing the chemical content will have a devastating effect on European exports to Asia, Africa and Australia, where consumers prefer stronger cigarettes, warned John Carlisle of the British Tobacco Manufacturers Assn. About 8,000 jobs in the EU could be at risk, he said.

While the decisions in Strasbourg, France, were applauded by most officials, some European lawmakers also complained that the campaign to reduce smoking and its damage to public health stands ever more in contradiction to EU agriculture policies that provide almost $900 million a year in subsidies to European tobacco farmers.

The residual resistance to the anti-smoking measures stems mostly from fears of losing much of the $60 billion in annual tax revenue from tobacco sales within the common market.

Most of the new regulations take effect in September 2003, including an option for individual countries to require that at least 30% of a cigarette package front and 40% of its back carry health warnings.

Carlisle of the British tobacco lobby dismissed the proposal to disgust consumers as “a rather tasteless, worthless exercise.” But Sweden, Finland, Britain and Belgium have said they will consider requiring such images on cigarette packages sold within their borders.

A company spokesman for Philip Morris International did not return phone calls by The Times to discuss the consequences for U.S. manufacturers.

EU officials, however, were clearly pleased by the moves to bridle the industry.

“After decades of deception and misinformation from the tobacco industry, the message about the true costs of smoking will finally start to hit home,” predicted Catherine Stihler, health spokeswoman for Britain’s Labor Party and a European Parliament member.

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Smoking in Europe

Nearly one of three European adults smokes. Here are statistics on who smokes in European Union countries, based on a British study:

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Source: Action on Smoking and Health