Twelve months today menthol cigarettes will be banned throughout the European Union.
Regardless of whether we have left by then (I have my doubts), menthols will be banned in the UK too.
The policy was introduced as part of the EU’s revised Tobacco Products Directive that was implemented on May 20, 2016.
Member states were given a year to introduce a range of measures including larger health warnings plus bans on ten packs and smaller pouches of rolling tobacco.
The ban on menthol-flavoured tobacco was overlooked by most people, including consumers, because it was given a three-year stay of execution.
I imagine that stocks will decline gradually in the new year before consumers wake up on May 20, 2020, and find that their local store no longer sells any brand of menthol cigarette, a product they may have purchased regularly for years if not decades.
The reason for the ban is the disputed claim that because menthols are allegedly ‘smoother’ than regular cigarettes they appeal more to teenage smokers and therefore encourage more children to smoke.
It’s said too that the minty flavour masks the taste of tobacco, which again makes them more appealing to children. Allegedly.
Consumers in Britain will notice the absence of menthol cigarettes more than in other European countries because according to Euromonitor 18 per cent of all cigarettes sold in the UK are menthol-flavoured.
In Ireland the figure is just three per cent.
Consumers will take it on the chin, as we always do, but the seriousness of the situation can’t be ignored.
We’re not talking about a display ban that ‘hides’ the product from customers, or ‘plain’ packaging that removes all branding and replaces it with the ‘ugliest’ colour in the world.
Those policies may ultimately reduce the number of brands available to consumers but they didn’t stop adults purchasing cigarettes, flavoured and non-flavoured.
Even the sexist ban on slim packs (which implied that women are influenced more by looks and length!) made no fundamental difference to people’s ability to smoke.
The ban on menthol cigarettes is different. Suddenly we are faced with the prohibition of an entire class of product that was first developed in the States in the 1920s.
After May 20 next year over one million consumers will have the following choices:
1. Switch to non-flavoured cigarettes
2. Quit smoking and switch to (menthol) vapes
3. Quit all nicotine products
4. Buy illicit menthol cigarettes on the black market
Almost one in five cigarettes sold in Britain are menthol. What next? A ban on all cigarettes, not to mention any product that is considered ‘attractive’ to young people - sweets and sugary drinks, for example.
We really are sleepwalking to prohibition and few people are either aware or willing to do anything about it.
WAKE UP!!!!!
See ‘UK "sleepwalking to prohibition" says Forest’ and ‘The EU’s mental ban on menthol‘ (Spiked).