WASHINGTON – The European Parliament is expected to vote today on proposed tobacco rules that address the use of additives, including burley, the News & Observer reports.
As a result, some U.S. tobacco growers said the rules could result in a ban on their products in one of the world’s largest and most lucrative tobacco markets.
“The flavor of that cigarette is all contingent not only on the tobacco, but what they add to it,” said Jonathan Shell, a fourth-generation tobacco farmer and a first-term Republican in the Kentucky House. “So if Marlboro doesn’t taste like Marlboro anymore, then people might not buy them to smoke. And if people don’t buy cigarettes, then the tobacco companies don’t need tobacco — and that means I can’t feed my family.”
U.S. burley growers shipped more than $110 million worth of their tobacco to European countries in 2011. Kentucky’s 4,500 growers, who rank first in the nation in burley production, ship 43% of their crop to Europe.
Shell characterized the vote as “just one more attack on the family farm.”
“There’s faces behind that cigarette,” Shell said. “And if this passes, it’s going to hurt a lot of the family farms here in Kentucky.”
Shell and two other Kentucky state lawmakers sent a letter to the European Union last week, saying the new rules would be “technically impossible to meet” and jeopardize overall trade relations with the U.S.
Tobacco opponents say the European Parliament should act on behalf of its citizens without fear of economic retaliation.
“If for any reason they prefer to smoke less U.S. tobacco, I think that should be up to them,” said Ellen Shaffer, co-director of the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health in San Francisco. “It just seems to me it’s such a classic case of why the trade arena is a terrible forum for hashing out these issues.”
Today’s vote comes after the European Parliament’s health committee voted this summer to ban slim cigarettes and the use of flavorings in tobacco products, an effort to combat smoking by youths. The new rules include updated packaging requirements and would ban flavors such as menthol and strawberry, along with ingredients such as vitamins and caffeine.
“Around 570 children between the ages of 11 to 15 start smoking every day in the U.K., and we cannot justify a delay in acting on this,” said Linda McAvan, a United Kingdom lawmaker who drafted the rules.
Shell maintains that no government should be allowed to put restrictions on his business or try to modify the private behavior of individuals.
“It’s a person’s responsibility to govern their own body and their own health,” Shell said. “They should not be telling people whether or not to smoke or whether or not smoking is bad for you. … Everyone knows that smoking’s bad for you.”