Danish health minister Magnus Heunicke has met with opposition from EU law to a permanent ban on smoking by Danes with a progressively increasing age limit as he has planned to apply subsequently from New Zealand, where the same type of legislation has neither been passed.
The Community directive on tobacco products TPD states that EU countries may not ban their sale to combat smoking which the Danish minister said was a legal obstacle to legislating the progressing age limit.
The plan, drawn up by a program in Denmark, would stipulate that those born after 2010 would not be able to purchase tobacco products from 2027. So it is speculated that the younger generation would not need to buy them because of the lack of addiction to tobacco products.
The proposed program of the bill seemed to deviate from Community law, however. The Community Tobacco Products Directive was adopted by the European Parliament in 2014 and has been revised since then. The Community directive provides, inter alia, for a ban on the sale of mint cigarettes and half-packs of 10 cigarettes.
Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke told parliament: “Based on this, the Ministry of Health concludes that banning the sale of nicotine or tobacco products to people born after 2010 or later would require a change in the (EU) Tobacco Directive. Of course we need a majority in parliament, but there is also the tobacco directive. As the rules are now, we could introduce it and make it available by 2035. But after that the tobacco products directive would have to change in order to continue the rules. We have different age limits according to the current rules, some are 15 and 16 years old and others are 17 and 18 years old. We could manage it. The goal is for the 29-year-old not to want to buy cigarettes because the person in question is not addicted. We fully recognize that there is both domestic and EU policy that needs to change, but that is why we are in politics. It’s about changing some rules.”
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