Sweden's government now recognises that reduced risk nicotine products are key to the country's low smoking prevalence. A new risk proportionate tobacco policy is being devised, but there is opposition. Will tobacco harm reduction be fully integrated into Swedish legislation? Stefan Matthison fills us in on the current state of play.
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Joanna Junak: Hello and welcome. I'm Joanna Junak and this is GFN News on GFN.TV. The Swedish government, in its budget for 2025, confirmed that harm reduction will be a key part of Swedish nicotine policy. Johan Holberg, a member of the moderate party who advocated for this change, celebrated the move, stating that the country finally has a nicotine policy focused on reducing harm from tobacco use. Joining us today to discuss the impact this change will have on Swedish nicotine policy is Stefan Mathisson, a journalist, editor-in-chief of VapeColon and a proponent of tobacco harm reduction in Sweden. Hello, Stefan. Can you tell us why these changes are so important for Sweden?
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Stefan Mathisson: Well, the Swedish tobacco policy has been debated for quite a few years now, and we kind of knew around three years ago when there was a flavor ban discussion going on in Sweden that a majority of the parliament actually wanted to change the policy and that kind of, we noticed that when the flavor ban for e-cigarettes was discussed because it was voted down. on the premises that we need a better policy in order to regulate all smoke-free products. We can't just ban stuff and stuff like that without actually knowing the results. And since Sweden has very low smoking rates and much of it is attributed to smoke-free products like snus and also nicotine pouches, but also vapes actually now. there was kind of a consensus to change something about the policy. But at that time, the government was very opposed to this. But then there was an election and the new government kind of set out to change many policies to a more liberal way of doing things. And so the tobacco policy was changed because of that. It hasn't been changed yet. It's been proposed to be changed, but there probably is a majority in parliament to change it. So that is why it's happening now. It hasn't happened before. There's also, if you look at why this is happening in Sweden, it is basically a lot of hard work from many activists, of course, but also politicians who have seen that tobacco policy in Sweden, especially in Sweden, is not really adjusted to what is going on in the marketplace when it comes to the use of oral tobacco like snus and also nicotine pouches. Also vapes, of course, but nicotine pouches and snus is kind of the main product. We have I think approximately, if you put it all together, around 14-15% of the population using nicotine products that are smoke-free. So of course, if we have a policy then that basically just says that we need to eradicate all nicotine use and make it less easy to use these products, that's not really going to flow well with the population's habits. And they need to change that. So the big change in the policy is actually to keep smoking, keep the the effects of smoking down. I mean, like the harms of smoking, or harms of nicotine use, actually, and then if you're going to do that you need to know the differences between oral use vaping and smoking you need to know the different health effects of that and that was what the parliament was asking for and well now they haven't really gotten the answer but they kind of just thought let's go, let's change the policy anyway, because we can, we have a majority in parliament. So as of right now, nothing has really changed yet, but big things are coming.
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Joanna Junak: Okay, so what is the new goal of Swedish tobacco policy now?
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Stefan Mathisson: The new goal of the policy, as I understand it, is to reduce the harms of nicotine use and look to an efficient policy that makes a difference between different kinds of use when they make legislations in all of our different areas. is still a very preventative policy, keeping youth away from nicotine as far as they can, but not through bans of the individual products, but through legislation that actually keeps the law enforcement involved, so to speak. I mean, they want to prohibit the use of nicotine people from buying and giving nicotine products to kids under 18. I don't know what the English word for that really is, but you can't just buy something for kids. You can now. You can actually buy cigarettes and give them to kids. It's not against the law, but it's going to be. And then they want to have some kind of When it comes to resellers, retailers, they are not allowed to stock products that are legal, for example. They can now basically do that, even if they don't sell them, they can't stockpile them. So that's kind of what the policy is going to lead to, more of that and less of bans, because they don't want to ban the products. As the one who's been advocating more for this from the political perspective, seen is Johan Holberg, and he says that flavors aren't deadly. Nicotine might be harmful, but flavors aren't harmful. So don't ban flavors, ban, put a nicotine limit on things instead, and try to keep them away from kids. So that is basically what the new policy probably will lead to. But there are bigger problems than that, of course, because the policy we have now has been very anti-nicotine policy that has been going on for like 20, 25 years by now. So many of the agencies, like the health agencies, they are very set in their ways and they're not going to change this in an instant. So they're going to right to kind of keep the old ways going. I think we'll see. Governments can be powerful and they can be less powerful depending on the agencies.
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Joanna Junak: You mentioned Johann Holberg who advocated for this change. So what impact does he expect the policy change to have on users of smokeless nicotine products?
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Stefan Mathisson: Well, I asked him that question when I interviewed him last time. And what he said is that he is hoping that this will lead to, for example, taxes. We already had a tax reduction on snooze, for example, going on. even though the taxes have been raised on snus the last couple of years, but now it's been lowered in a very symbolic way. They lowered it on snus and want to pay for that lower taxes with high taxes on cigarettes. So it's a very harm reduction thing to do. So that's one thing from the financial standpoint that they did here in Sweden. Also, I think what he said is that maybe it'll be easier for agencies and also people in general to know what's going on with the products because I mean, the former government wanted to ban flavors in e-cigarettes, for example. What happens to the marketplace? What happens to the consumers then? We don't know what we're going to get. So hopefully another policy will kind of make it more, you know, you can know what's going on in the future, even though this can change with the new government, of course, but still more sustainability on the market. So that's what he says, at least. What I think is a different story. I think we have lots of things to do before we get a stable market going on. Yeah, that's what he thinks.
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Joanna Junak: Thank you, Stefan. We'll keep an eye on the situation. That's all for today. Tune in next time here on GFM TV or on our podcast. You can also find transcriptions of each episode on the GFM TV website. Thanks for watching or listening. See you next time.