Joseph Hart 15 January 2024

 

Paranoia is an ugly thing. It comes in many forms, and if you’ve seen it up close among friends or loved ones, you’ll know how corrosive and isolating this thought process can be.

However, the Brussels Times seemed happy enough to hand over an editorial to a Smoke-Free Partnership footsoldier so he could weave some deluded and baroque conspiracy theories about Big Tobacco on their website.

Let’s dive in.

The article

I didn’t catch this at the time, but in October 2023, The Brussels Times put on their own production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Well, it was an article titled “Snus-mania: How Tobacco industry falsehoods delays the EU Tobacco Tax Directive”.

It’s not clear — nor is it declared — that the piece is from a former trainee at the Smoke-Free Partnership who has been sent out to spread their oddball gospel. All of the typical tropes are there, including false inferences that nicotine causes cancer, brain-dead anti-capitalist rhetoric, and moral panic about “the kids”.

But it gets worse.

The framing

The author frames the article to suggest that pushback against taxing snus and nicotine pouches is a black-eye for Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. It’s basically a direct rip from a Smoke-Free Partnership press release from late 2022.

While taxation is an effective tool for reducing smoking, the author obscures the fact that harm-reduction products are critical in the battle against cancer and other smoking-related illnesses.

Increasing taxes on harm-reduction products makes them less appealing to people who smoke. After all, alongside the availability of flavours, saving money is one of the factors that prompts people to quit smoking.

Putting pouches outside the affordability range of people who smoke will drive them back towards smoking and increase their risk of cancer. It’s that simple.

Muddying the waters

The Swedish Experience is a very inconvenient thing for the Tobacco Control community. Explaining away the country’s smoke-free (5% smoking prevalence) and low cancer rates is not easy. So, the author has taken the step of just lying.

He tars the Swedish Experience as “the unsubstantiated claim that Sweden has the lowest rates of smoking-related mortality in Europe thanks to the popularity of snus and nicotine pouches,” ignoring research to the contrary.

Then, he suggests that “effective tobacco control policies are the likelier culprit.” Of course, an explanation of why other countries with similar tobacco control policies aren’t posting sub-5 % numbers is not forthcoming.

Just doing business

The author also seems aghast that a company would act in the interests of profits. We’ve all gotten used to these blowhards tweeting anti-capitalist nonsense from their iPhones, blissfully unaware of the irony, but these accusations fall short because the products under discussion are relatively harmless.

The author seems unable to balance the idea that a Swedish business could sell a product AND there could be cultural significance to its citizens. He thumbs his nose up at the idea that “sovereignty” and “self-determinism” are factors in protecting snus from outrageous tax rises, as if these concerns are beyond normal citizens and could only be part of some Big Tobacco ruse.

The thing is, people are and should be sceptical about technocrats making decisions that affect their lives. You don’t have to be an economics expert to see how Ireland, Italy, Greece, etc., were treated by the EU. Similarly, the WHO’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic should give anyone pause. Attempts to suppress these discussions are harmful.

An image depiction of a comic book-style scene, featuring a character patterned after a detective appearing to weave intricately complex, almost surreal theories about Big Tobacco, represented as looming shadows in the background. The scene should also include some imagery referencing the European Union such as flags or notable landmarks, as well as hints of the Smoke-Free Partnership's symbol and snus or nicotine pouches to visualize the health aspect of the narrative

Final thoughts

The Smoke-Free Partnership and its ideological adherents see smoke-free products as a threat to their very existence.

As people stop smoking and embrace products like nicotine pouches, the Tobacco Control community is forced to recycle discredited studies, lie about bubblegum flavours targeting kids, and weave fantastical narratives about shadowy Big Tobacco figures dictating EU policy. It’s embarrassing.