According to the 2012 Eurobarometer (an annual survey carried out by the European Commission in the 27 countries of the Union), 23 million Europeans (even 5% of the European population), including 3 million French, have already tasted the electronic cigarette. However, not everyone who tries it adopts it. Of the 3 million French people who have tested the e-cigarette, 500,000 have adopted it.
It is especially since the ban on smoking in public places that the electronic cigarette has been adopted by European smokers. However, the regulation of their sale is different depending on the country, so MEPs must decide, on October 8, of a harmonization and decide in favor, or not, of the classification of the e-cigarette as a pharmaceutical product.
If Brussels adopts this regulation, the electronic cigarette will be sold in pharmacies only and will be subject to a marketing authorization and different taxation.
For MEPs, this classification as a pharmaceutical product is not trivial. They want the e-cigarette to remain a smoking cessation product. Classifying it as a drug would limit its use to smokers wishing to reduce their consumption while today, “We offer smokers a product that is not used to stop but to smoke differently, with less risk” explains Prof. Bertrand Dautzenberg, professor of pulmonology at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, who presented a E-cigarette report last May at the Directorate General of Health.
At the moment, it is only in Austria that e-cigarettes are considered as medical devices and nicotine cartridges as drugs. If this project for European classification as a medicinal product is successful, it will be voted on a priori in 2014 before the renewal of the European institutions and will have to be implemented in French law two years later, ie in 2016. This is the usual process for the European institutions.
