Tobacco products in the European Union Common Entry Gate (EU-CEG): A tool for monitoring the EU tobacco products directive

Dolors Carnicer-Pont; Olena Tigova; Anne Havermans; Eline Remue; Matus Ferech; Katharina Vejdovszky; Renata Solimini; Silvano Gallus; Emilia Nunes; Carl C Lange; Cristina Gomez-Chacon; Francisco Ruiz-Dominguez; Panagiotis Behrakis; Constantine I Vardavas; Esteve Fernandez

doi:10.18332/tpc/145501

Tobacco products in the European Union Common Entry Gate (EU-CEG): A tool for monitoring the EU tobacco products directive

Tob Prev Cessat. 2022 Mar 2:8:10. doi: 10.18332/tpc/145501. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Dolors Carnicer-Pont^{1

2

3

4}, Olena Tigova^{1

2

3

4}, Anne Havermans⁵, Eline Remue⁶, Matus Ferech⁷, Katharina Vejdovszky⁸, Renata Solimini⁹, Silvano Gallus¹⁰, Emilia Nunes¹¹, Carl C Lange¹², Cristina Gomez-Chacon¹³, Francisco Ruiz-Dominguez¹⁴, Panagiotis Behrakis¹⁵, Constantine I Vardavas¹⁵, Esteve Fernandez^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Cancer Prevention and Control Programme, Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Department, Catalan Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain.
² Tobacco Control Research Group, Epidemiology and Public Health Programme, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain.
³ School of Medicine and Clinical Sciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Centre for Biomedical Research Network, CIBERES, Madrid, Spain.
⁵ Centre for Health Protection, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, RIVM, Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
⁶ Federal Public Service Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment, Brussels, Belgium.
⁷ Tobacco Control Team, DG SANTE B2, Cross-border Healthcare and Tobacco Control, Brussels, Belgium.
⁸ Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, Vienna, Austria.
⁹ National Centre on Addiction and Doping, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy.
¹⁰ Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, IRCCS, Milan, Italy.
¹¹ Department of Health, Ministry of Health, Lisbon, Portugal.
¹² The Danish Safety Technology Authority, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹³ Tobacco Prevention and Control Unit, Deputy Direction of Promotion, Prevention and Quality, General Direction of Public Health, Ministry of Health, Madrid, Spain.
¹⁴ General Directorate of Public Health and Pharmaceutical Management, Regional Ministry of Health and Families of Andalusia, Sevilla, Spain.
¹⁵ George D. Behrakis Research Lab, Hellenic Cancer Society, Athens, Greece.

Abstract

Introduction: Under the European Union (EU) Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU) (TPD), manufacturers and importers of tobacco products are required to report information to the European Commission (EC) and Member States (MS) on products intended to be placed on the market. We describe the distribution of notifications to the EU Common Entry Gate (EU-CEG) and identify key fields for improvement on reporting cigarettes or roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco.

Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of secondary data reported in the EU-CEG was conducted for tobacco products notified within EU-CEG between June 2016 and October 2019 for 12 EU MS. Analysis of compliance to specific regulations for priority additives that refer to cigarettes and RYO was conducted for 10 EU countries.

Results: Overall, 39170 tobacco products were notified. This included 16762 (42.8%) notifications of cigars, followed by cigarettes 11242 (28.7 %), waterpipes 3291 (8.4%), cigarillos (n=1783), pipe (n=1715), RYO (n=1635), chewing tobacco (n=1021), novel tobacco products (n=839), herbal products for smoking (n=535), other (n=258), nasal (n=74) and oral tobacco (n=15). In cigarettes and RYO tobacco products, the proportion of ingredients notified in all countries that contained an unknown Chemical Abstract Services (CAS) number was 3.8% and 2.1%, respectively. The proportion of underreporting flagging of priority additives ranged from 15.9% in Malta to 41.3% in Lithuania, the mean proportion of underreporting of the variable 'priority additive' for the 10 countries together was 24.7%.

Conclusions: In the EU-CEG data base, for the period of analysis, a significant number of product notifications took place while large variations in the number of types of tobacco products notified across EU countries was noted. The timely monitoring of these data is needed so that products non-compliant within the EU-CEG system are assessed.

Keywords: CAS number; EU-CEG; Tobacco Products Directive; cigarette characterizing flavor; ingredients; priority additives.