Fantastic Lives and Where to Ban Them: Europe’s War on Harm Reduction

If you look at the world today, you’ll notice there are really two groups of people. You have Group A. These are the people who actually talk to consumers. They live in the real world. They understand why a father chooses a pouch over a cigarette. They see the guy who wants to stay alert at work without smelling like an ashtray. They listen.

Then you have Group B. These are the people who only talk à propos consumers. They sit in high-ceilinged offices in Paris and Brussels. They write 143-page reports in a language no normal person speaks. These are people like the French government and the health commissioners of the EU. They don’t know you. They don’t want to know you. To them, you aren’t a person with a life and a family. You’re just a data point to be managed, a problem to be solved, or a criminal to be jailed.

They are, by every definition of the word, out of touch.

But there’s a deeper reason this matters. It has to do with reality. In life, there is what you see and there is what you don’t see. This is a concept as old as time, but our leaders have completely forgotten it.

You can see the person switching from smoking to pouches. That’s the visible part. You see a man standing on a street corner in Stockholm, not coughing, not reaching for a lighter. That’s the “seen.” And because the bureaucrats can see it, they think they can control it. They see a product and they decide to ban it.

But then there’s what you don’t see. And this is the part that actually matters.

You don’t see the daughter who no longer has to worry about her father dying of lung cancer before her wedding. You don’t see the wife who finally stopped checking her husband’s pulse in his sleep because he’s not wheezing anymore. You don’t see the millions of people in public spaces who aren’t breathing in second-hand smoke because the guy next to them chose a pouch instead of a cigarette.

Those are the unseen benefits. They are the quiet, invisible victories of the Swedish way. But because Group B can’t put those feelings in a spreadsheet, they act like they don’t exist.

The French government wants to put people in prison for five years for carrying these pouches. They claim they’re doing it for public health. But how can you be for public health when you’re actively destroying the things that keep people healthy?

The truth is, they don’t care about the health of your family. They care about the power of their office. They’d rather you keep smoking a legal, tax-paying cigarette than allow you to be free, healthy, and independent using Swedish success.

In the Single Market, we were promised the free movement of goods. We were promised a Europe that worked for everyone. Instead, we got a Europe where success is a crime and the people in charge refuse to see the lives they are destroying.