The Lancet: Delay in Tobacco Directive will raise serious questions

The EU's revised Tobacco Products Directive – which was set to place substantial new restrictions on tobacco companies' promotion of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, including banning "e-cigarettes" – is dangerously close to stalling, and "further delay will raise serious questions about whose interest the EU Commission is promoting", according to the authors of a Comment, published in The Lancet journal today. A Lancet News podcast special report also looks at these issues, including an interview with John Dalli, the former EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy. Just two days after Mr Dalli's resignation, the offices of anti-tobacco campaigners in Brussels were the target of a sophisticated burglary, in which laptops and documents were stolen, but other valuables left untouched. According to Professor Martin McKee, Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and one of the authors of the Comment, these events have "set alarm bells ringing." "While the truth about these events will emerge eventually, it may be too late for the revised Tobacco Products Directive. Yet there is no reason why this should be...