EPA shares expertise on addressing Addiction and Youth Mental Health at the European Parliament

EPA Past President, Prof. Geert Dom, spoke at the event on the Future of the Younger Generation: How to Curb the Addiction Epidemic and Protect Europe’s Brain Capital at the European Parliament in Brussels at the Conference on 24 June 2026.

The event was co-organised by the Mental Power Foundation for Brain Health and Polish Lung Cancer Association. This important discussion on Europe’s youth mental health could be held at the Parliament thanks to MEP Elżbieta Łukaciejewska and MEP Adam Jarubas.

The event brought together perspectives from psychiatry, oncology, neurology, regulation, civil society, health policy, and experience with the shifting social environment for addition among young people in Europe.

Prof. Dom raised the importantance of implementating clinical experience into practice and policy, with a strong focus on targetted selective prevention in schools where we have the best chance of helping persons at risk of developing a mental health condition avoid developing a substance use disorder.

The event featured a call to action, centred on requiring mandatory toxicological tresting of new nicotine and analogous addictive products, banning flavours used to attract child consumption, instituting plain packaging, imposing penalties on digital platforms that amplify harmful marketing, and shifting the narrative to show that nicotine harms the mental health and brain capital.