a new Tobacco Products Directive - tobacco must taste as tobacco!!!

The "Tobacco in the EU" info graph shows that 700.000 persons are dying each year due to smoking!

The new Tobacco Products Directive,  replacing  Directive (2001/37/EC), to be applied from May 2015, will lay down rules governing the manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco and related products. These include cigarettes, roll your own tobacco, pipe tobacco, cigars, cigarillos, smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes and herbal products for smoking.

In particular, the new Directive:

• prohibits cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco with characterising flavours,
• requires the tobacco industry to submit detailed reports to the Member States on the ingredients used in tobacco products, in particular cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco,
• requires that health warnings appear on packages of tobacco and related products. Combined (picture and text) health warnings must cover 65% of the front and back of cigarette and roll-your-own tobacco packages,
• sets minimum dimensions for warnings and eliminates small packages for certain tobacco products,
• bans all promotional and misleading elements on tobacco products,
• sets out safety and quality requirements for consumer electronic cigarettes

The revision is expected to lead to a 2% drop in consumption of tobacco over a period of 5 years. This is roughly equivalent to 2.4 million fewer smokers in the EU.

Read the FAQ for more details.

Check also the E-cigarettes Myth Buster!