JTI Romania: Banning menthol cigarettes will increase black market rather than benefit public health

The Tobacco Directive recently voted by the European Parliament, which bans, among others, menthol cigarettes and imposes larger picture warnings, will not bring any benefits to public health, but will cause losses for all EU Member States’ budgets, according to a JTI statement. “The excessive increase of health warnings, to up to 65 percent, with pictures positioned on the top of the package, and standardization of the size and shape of the package will not increase awareness of risks associated with smoking,” said Gilda Lazar, Director Corporate Affairs & Communications JTI Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria. She however believes that retailers and consumers will have difficulties in distinguishing the brands and counterfeiters will have a pattern ready for counterfeiting the packages. “Banning ingredients, such as menthol, will not result in a decrease in smoking, but will give smugglers an extra opportunity to create a parallel black market providing unregulated products from neighboring countries, outside the EU,” according to JTI. The draft legislation updating the EU Tobacco Directive, which aims to make tobacco products less attractive to young people, was endorsed by MEPs on Wednesday (February 26). This legislation, already informally agreed with EU health ministers, would require all packs to carry picture warnings covering 65 percent of their surface, according to a statement of the European Parliament. E-cigarettes will also be regulated, either as medicinal products if they claim to help smokers to quit, or as tobacco products. “The text would ban flavouring in cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco that would make the product more attractive by giving it a “characteristic flavor”. Menthol would be banned from 2020. Flavors would be allowed for water pipe tobacco,” reads the statement. The text is to be approved by the Council of Ministers on March 14. Member states would have to enforce the legislation on tobacco products within two years of the updated directive’s date of enforcement. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com