Oliver Várhelyi and the Trumpification of EU Health Policy

The Health Commissioner’s World No Tobacco Day statement shows just how detached he is from reality. He should go.

Another day, another ridiculous statement by Oliver Várhelyi, the European Commissioner for Health. VarHar has become the bumbling Donald Trump figure of this European Commission, with no healthcare qualifications and no respect from his team that has given up bothering to factcheck and correct his embarrassing policies and misleading statements, particularly pertaining to his dossier on the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD).

VarHar does not read the comments or Community Notes attached to his X posts, correcting the continuous flow of misinformation like his belief that nicotine causes cancer (it doesn’t), that vaping is not effective as a smoking cessation tool (the Cochrane study confirmed it is) or that e-cigarettes are as harmful as cigarettes (a UK government study concluded it is 95% less harmful).

Like the WHO / Bloomberg echo chamber, and like the Trump administration, facts don’t really matter in advancing a political agenda. Add to that the curious sideshow that Várhelyi is a Fidesz leftover from the Orban regime, fighting for his political survival, and the TPD revision is taking on an absurd plot.

A “Happy on the Inside” clown

May 31^st was World No Tobacco Day and VarHar’s press release was a case study in confused statements and contradictory policies.

The Commissioner begins by repeating the opinion that Europe’s tobacco policy - or the restrictive parts of it at least - have been responsible for progress made in reducing smoking rates. But this statement has already been debunked by the Commission’s Better Regulation watchdog itself, which says that claim can’t be supported. Not a good start.

Várhelyi continues:

“But while traditional smoking is decreasing, new tobacco and nicotine products are increasingly reaching a new generation. Adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 29 are particularly exposed. More than half of nicotine pouch users are under 40, one in five consumers of tobacco and nicotine products aged 15 to 19 years started by regularly using e-cigarettes, and nearly one in ten young people aged 15 to 24 has already used heated tobacco products.”

Let’s break this down line by line.

“But while traditional smoking is decreasing, new tobacco and nicotine products are increasingly reaching a new generation.”

Why doesn’t Várhelyi acknowledge that traditional smoking has decreased due, in large part, to the increased use of lower harm nicotine products. The Swedish government, the only EU member state to attain smoke-free status (less than 5% of the population smoking) has recognised that.

“Adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 29 are particularly exposed.”

The ages Várhelyi is using for young people make no sense at all. In the public consultation, young people were defined as those between the age of 10 and 24.

This is a very wide classification ranging from very vulnerable children, to free-thinking teenagers with access to information to responsible adults going well beyond the “age of consent”. VarHar then pushed the age limit up to 29 in this statement. This is an age when most smokers begin to consider the need to quit and should be given access to effective smoking cessation tools like e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.

In the next sentence, he seems to push the age of vulnerability up to 40.

“More than half of nicotine pouch users are under 40, one in five consumers of tobacco and nicotine products aged 15 to 19 years started by regularly using e-cigarettes, and nearly one in ten young people aged 15 to 24 has already used heated tobacco products.”

This is pure “VarHar speak”, just throwing out numbers and products with no concern for reason or common sense. It resembles the Trump “Weave”, but the European Union has to manage policy with more responsibility. What is he talking about here? Pouches? Vapes? Heated tobacco?

And which age groups? 15 to 19 years old? 15 to 24? Or those under 40?

Like Trump’s Truth Social posts, VarHar’s single sentence here is just too nonsensical to even begin to try to unpack.

The press statement continues:

“This month we published both a call for evidence and public consultation on the revision of the EU Tobacco Products Directive and Tobacco Advertising Directive. We welcome all contributions to inform how we can tackle the health consequences of tobacco across the EU.”

The words “public consultation” is misleading when you consider that most of the questions are leading, meaning that the participants cannot actually express their position most of the time but are trapped by the bias of the consultation architects. In an analysis we undertook, we found that it’s impossible to express views consistent with tobacco harm reduction: advocating strong rules on cigarettes, but a permissive stance towards safer nicotine products.

That’s because safer nicotine products like vapes and nicotine pouches are grouped together with cigarettes, assuming that their safety profiles are the same and that the regulations will be applied equally to all of the various products.

When Várhelyi says he welcomes all contributions from all stakeholders, we should be reminded how, in past consultations, when thousands of ex-smokers took the time to fill out the form and declare how they were finally able to quit with the support of e-cigarettes, their contributions were downgraded as being part of a tobacco industry lobbying campaign. Stakeholders only matter when they agree with VarHar’s political agenda.

Europeans look on with horror as an imperial dictator destroys the US political establishment, replacing it with a regime of policy by diktat. But they don’t have to look that far to see a similar political manipulation in Brussels. It is time for the President of the European Commission to demand the resignation of Oliver Várhelyi.

Peter Beckett is the editor of Clearing the Air. This article was published in coordination with Clearing the Air.