Good afternoon, ladies & gentlemen!

Welcome to this webinar organised by ENSP!

ENSP is the European Network which integrates seventy-one National organisations on tobacco control, smoking and treatment. It is spread through thirty-eight countries, twenty-two of them belonging to the European Union and the other sixteen to the WHO-European Region, covering approximately seven-hundred-fifty million citizens, and being active since twenty-four years ago. Next year will be our silver anniversary!

Ending Tobacco Epidemic in Europe.

Tobacco is still the leading preventable cause of cancer in Europe. We will devote this afternoon to the “Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan”, which has been recently launched by the European Commission. All the six speakers will offer us their different and complementary perspectives on the tobacco/nicotine – cancer relationship.

Ending Tobacco Epidemic is nevertheless a public health concept that goes far beyond cancer, even though ‒no doubt about it!‒ cancer is an important one. Today we´ll focus on cancer, which is responsible for a third of all the death caused by tobacco/nicotine consumption, but allow me to bring to light other health problems that, in those who smoke, significantly increase their mortality rates and remarkably decrease their life quality, like cardiovascular diseases (first cause of morbi-mortality in smokers and vapers), respiratory diseases, psychiatric disorders (strongly associated with nicotine consumption), osteoporosis, or cataracts, just to mention only a few.

The question is that to control tobacco consumption in Europe is absolutely critical. Although there has been an impressive improvement in comparison to the end of the last century, data shows that smoking prevalence in Europe has barely lowered in the last few years, and that a not inconsiderable amount of European countries haven´t still implemented different tobacco control measures about which there is enough scientific evidence: about their usefulness, about their cost-effectiveness, and about their ability to decrease some of the social inequalities generated or increased by smoking. WHO has recently announced that, in twenty twenty-five, the European Region will be the only one where smoking prevalence in women will not be lower than 30%.

The implementation of different measures like plain-packaging, funding of effective treatments, restrictions on smoking in public places, restrictions on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, as well as taxes and prices policies, vary greatly among the different European countries. Even those countries which could be described as “advanced” in the implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, first universal treaty in public health, they still have wide room for improvement.

There is also wide room for improvement on our countering of new (and old) tobacco commercial strategies from so-called “big tobacco” firms. To be able to avoid the new re-normalization they are looking for, we have to be able to regulate adequately their new nicotine products without their interference, since most of these new products are in their hands, and they are eager to push regulations in the most convenient ways for their commercial interests. 

And in the opinion of most tobacco control experts this implies to regulate them mostly as we consider we have to regulate tobacco. There is not a huge difference between the old tobacco products and the new nicotine ones: the main difference lies in their commercial strategies.

I think it is high time for the European Institutions to take new bold, daring, effective measures to improve tobacco control. It is high time for the European Health Authorities to ask their member States a serious commitment with public health through a tobacco control comprehensive plan, an overall strategy, able to include all those actions which have proofed themselves effective and able to decrease the gaps existing among countries and, within each country, among the different social and economic strata.

The unfair, alarming high gaps in smoking prevalence that can be observed in those groups with lesser access to education, training and health opportunities should not leave us indifferent and need to be also tackled.

As I have previously said, today we´ll focus on cancer and tobacco.

Regarding this, the plan announced by the European Commissioner Kyriakides just three weeks ago is an outstanding example.

If we are able to achieve it, an European Tobacco Endgame will significantly reduce the damage caused by cancer in the whole European Union; and not only the ravages of cancers, but also those from some others diseases and disorders. The end of nicotine recreative consumption will lead to a noteworthy improvement in our level of wellness and in our level of health.

In Europe, each year tobacco is responsible for seven hundred thousand deaths and accounts for an expenditure of twenty-five billion euros cost only for the provision of healthcare. In addition to it, smoking causes a not-so-easy to estimate burden of pain and suffering, not only for the smokers, but also for their families and loved ones.

We all, who work in tobacco control, are therefore going to support wholeheartedly this whole initiative.

We are going to have now the opportunity to listen directly to six voices playing an important role in this field: Stella Kyriakides, Commissioner responsible for such an ambitious plan; Oxana Domenti, WHO representative at the European Union; Anil D´Cruz, President of the Union for International Cancer Control; Panagiotis Behrakis, ENSP Scientific Committee President; Vlad Voiculescu, Minister of Health of Romania; and Antonella Cardone, Director of the European Cancer Patient Coalition. Each one, from their own perspective and professional expertise, will contribute to our perception on tobacco endgame as a strategy to reduce cancer.

Even though politicians, as representatives of citizens, are those who should lead them, there is no doubt that civil society as a whole -and patients in particular- are the final recipients of those policies, and they should contribute to their elaboration.

It is both fair and enlightening. As a health professional and as a cancer patient (not the only one in this forum), I support it and can verify it.