Spain’s misguided vaping crackdown reflects dangerous trend as EU eyes new rules

As the EU gears up to review its vaping regulations, key member-states are already pressing ahead with their domestic agendas. Among the most notable of this group, Spain is preparing to overhaul national vaping laws by the end of 2025, yet its government is taking a deeply discouraging direction.

Spearheaded by Health Minister Mónica García, Spain’s anti-vaping plan reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of vaping’s role in tobacco cessation and harm reduction, with analysts warning that its measures risk reversing the country's smoke-free progress and associated health gains. From blanket bans and excessive fines on vaping in outdoor public places to vaping flavour prohibitions, Madrid's new rules face domestic criticism for ignoring the latest scientific evidence.

Concerningly, Spain is far from alone in the EU, with a contingent of member-states pursuing similarly misguided policies to rein in vaping that threaten to hinder the bloc’s public health ambitions. With decision-time rapidly approaching, Brussels must draw a clear line between tobacco products and less harmful alternatives like vaping as it pursues its ‘Tobacco-Free Generation’ 2040 goal – the crown jewel of the Commission’s Beating Cancer Plan.

Madrid aligning with EU’s anti-vaping coalition

The Spanish government has framed its anti-smoking plan, unveiled last year, as a necessary update given the development of vaping products over the past decade and the EU’s tobacco-free vision. Yet, Madrid’s new rules will ironically undermine the very policy commitment it aims to support. Guided by the widely-debunked notion that vaping products "constitute a gateway to addiction and tobacco consumption", Spain’s Health Ministry is placing vaping and tobacco on the same regulatory footing – an approach that flies in the face of science.

Under the plan, Spain is prohibiting vaping in public spaces, including restaurants, terraces and beaches, with vapers risking a €200 euro fine for violating this draconian law. What’s more, flavoured vapes face an outright ban, despite their well-documented role in helping adult smokers quit cigarettes. Encouragingly, Madrid’s vaping crackdown is facing domestic pushback. Last month, the Spanish competition authority requested stronger evidence from the government to justify its restrictions, echoing concerns from medical professionals about the lack of long-term data backing such drastic moves.

In addition to its planned regulations, Spain has already introduced an excise tax on vaping e-liquids and other smoke-free products, making these vital tobacco cessation tools less accessible – particularly for low-income groups disproportionately affected by smoking. A recent study from Smoke Free Sweden has notably warned that Madrid’s excessive regulatory stance could reverse recent gains in smoking reduction, while other anti-smoking campaigners have flagged the risk of fueling the vaping black market – as seen in Australia.

Beyond its borders, Spain has joined forces with other EU countries to advance this punitive model. Alongside the Netherlands and 10 other member-states, Spain signed a letter to EU Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi in March calling for tighter EU rules on vaping in the upcoming Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) revision – a mere three months after Madrid and 15 other capitals pushed the Commission to propose a regulatory expansion of tobacco taxation to include vaping products.

Spotlight on vaping’s tobacco harm reduction role

The coordinated pressure from this bloc of EU countries reflects a worrying trend across the continent: a refusal to engage with the latest science. Far too many leaders remain wilfully and ideologically blind to vaping’s role in tobacco harm reduction, failing to distinguish between the vastly diverging health implications of combustible tobacco and vaping products.

Bucking this trend, a number of EU countries have however highlighted the excessive nature of Spain’s measures. Italy, Romania and Croatia have notably criticized Madrid for its insufficient consideration of less restrictive regulatory approaches, with Rome and Bucharest describing proposals like the blanket flavours ban as antithetical to public health goals and the principle of proportionality. These member-states recognize that placing the same restrictions on tobacco and vaping products directly threatens smokers' journey to quit tobacco – a position backed by the scientific literature.

Expert Clive Bates has recently emphasized that "smoking is a uniquely harmful consumer behaviour", with the inhalation of toxic chemicals produced by the combustion of tobacco overwhelmingly responsible for cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory disease risks.

Crucially, a UK review of 363 studies identifies vaping as the single most effective tobacco cessation tool, while NYU-led research has found that smokers who transitioned to regular vaping use were up to four times more likely than their non-vaping counterparts to quit tobacco within a year. What’s more, a separate study reveals that smokers who switch to vaping exclusively can achieve health indicators similar to those of former smokers.

Beyond establishing vaping’s harm reduction and cessation benefits, the evidence equally invalidates specific measures advanced by Spain and its anti-vaping allies, such as outdoor and flavour bans. According to King's College London research, vaping produces “little-to-no side-stream emissions", rendering overly-restrictive public space bans incomprehensible and threatening to vapers, who will de facto be forcibly exposed to harmful second-hand smoke in designated smoking areas. Furthermore, US studies confirm that vaping flavours increase smokers' quitting odds and that flavour bans would push one-third of vapers back to cigarettes.

Regulatory road map for Europe

Faced with this wealth of evidence on the avoidable pitfalls of ideologically-grounded vaping regulations, European policymakers can no longer persist with baseless decisions that will significantly undermine public health across the continent. The anti-vaping crusades seen in countries like Spain and the Netherlands highlight a broader drift away from science-based policymaking that threatens to undermine years of progress in tobacco harm reduction – but the EU need not imitate its member-states' mistakes.

As Brussels prepares its reform of vaping regulations in the coming months, it must reaffirm a clear distinction between combustible tobacco and vaping products, guided by a core set of principles: science, proportionality and harm reduction. These are the same fundamentals that inform policy responses to other health challenges, yet are too easily forgotten in the nicotine products debate.

Looking ahead, the smarter path is clear: support smokers in switching to less harmful alternatives, ensure regulations are aligned with scientifically-established health risks and prioritise enforcement against the illicit vaping trade certain to rise should Brussels follow certain EU countries down the road of regulatory excess. Striking the right balance will be essential in safeguarding public health and keeping the bloc’s ‘tobacco-free 2040’ ambition within reach.

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