Europe’s Beating #Cancer Plan

Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan will form a core part of Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakiades’ term in office. A pan-European strategy to combat cancer is long overdue and we welcome Commissioner Kyriakiades’ initiative in tackling what is the second leading cause of death in Europe, write Dr Delon Human and Dr Anders Milton.

On 10 September, the Commission held a town hall on the Beating Cancer Plan. Unfortunately, this town hall did not fill us with hope – it seems that the Commission may be about to miss out on the chance of a lifetime and fail to sufficiently tackle preventable cancers in Europe.

Not only did the town hall fail to pay heed to the most obvious preventable cause of cancer in smoking, it seemed to disregard the opinion of EU citizens. Of the submissions to the Plan’s public consultation, nearly 20% supported the adoption of harm reduction plans for alcohol and tobacco. One in every six recommended policies which encourage the use of reduced risk nicotine products by smokers, such as e-cigarettes.

As stated at the launch of the consultation by the Commission, 3.5 million people in the EU are diagnosed with cancer annually, and 1.3 million die from it, yet over 40% of cancer cases are preventable.

The WHO estimates that one in every two smokers will develop a tobacco-related disease with 700,000 Europeans dying from smoking every year. 90% of lung cancers alone can be prevented by eliminating tobacco use in Europe.

What is often forgotten, however, is that smokers consume cigarettes for nicotine but get cancer from the tobacco, tar and thousands of other additives in cigarettes. Nicotine itself is not a carcinogen. This raises the question; what if there was a way to offer smokers the nicotine they desire while removing carcinogens?

Tobacco harm reduction presents the clear and obvious answer to this question. The use of alternative, potentially reduced risk products, like e-cigarettes, could eliminate smoking induced cancer in Europe within a generation.

Advertisement

A study of the results of the 2014 Eurobarometer survey by several European academics emphasised this point. The study found that the vast majority of EU citizens consuming e-cigarettes on a regular basis were former smokers or smokers attempting to quit.

Countries like Sweden have shown a way forward for Europe to reduce tobacco-induced cancers through the adoption of science-based approaches to reduce smoking prevalence and smoking-related deaths. Sweden offers tobacco alternatives like snus and this has helped them to achieve the lowest tobacco-related mortality rate of all EU countries relative to its population size.

In an attempt to mitigate the devastating effects of the pandemic, which has so far taken the lives of almost 200,000 Europeans, EU institutions and member state governments immediately turned to science and evidence to inform policy. Lockdowns, social distancing and working from home have all become normalised as part of the effort to overcome COVID-19.

This sense of pragmatism and efficiency must be mirrored by the Commission’s Beating Cancer Plan.

Harm reduction policy, particularly tobacco harm reduction, has extraordinary potential to reduce avoidable smoking induced cancers. It can save the lives of countless Europeans. We are calling on the Commission to recognize this potential, to hear the voices of European citizens, and leave no stone unturned in the fight to beat cancer.

Share this article: