Reply to post: Blimey

Big Pharma wrote EU anti-vaping diktat, claims Tory ex-MEP

Steven Raith

Blimey

I think the best part was the follow up to the specific question about the enforcement.

Earl Cathcart:

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has twice mentioned weights and measures authorities enforcing this in a heavy-handed or a light-touch way. Can the Minister comment on which he thinks they will do?

Lord Prior:

I certainly hope that enforcement will be more "Italian" than traditionally British, if I may put it that way.

Which means, in short, that the intent is to barely enforce it at all.

That's an astounding condemnation of the incoming regs, and there were plenty more jaw-droppers in there too, including Earl Cathcart - who was quite the troublemaker in there.

"I hope that when I run out of my 2.4% nicotine supply and I am forced to use the weaker nicotine, I do not switch back to smoking. That is the danger for many e-cigarette users. Perhaps by the time I run out of my 2.4% nicotine supply, stronger nicotine may be available on the black market, with all the dangers that that will entail."

That's a member of the House of Lords intimating that he'll ignore the rules and actively break the law because he feels they're so flat out inappropriate.

The whole debate is worth watching if you have the time, because it's tricky to explain in words just how utterly dismissive the committee was on this. Almost every statement was laced with undertones of "how the fuck did we even get here??".

Probably the most encouraging thing is that even just a year ago, the Lords were still fairly on the fence about this. So it's nice to see them coming around to a more common sense standpoint, even if at this stage, their hands (and that of The Other Place) are pretty tied now WRT to regulation.

Heres a recording of the whole shebang should you be interested.

Steven R

PS: Slight aside, but if you use e-cigs and are happy that they haven't been entirely screwed (just mostly) in the UK, you have the New Nicotine Alliance to thank for that; they work quietly in the background with APPGs, the MHRA and DoH to try to knock back some of the more idiotic rules and have been very successful - it's why you can get spare parts to increase your tank size after the TPD restricts them to 2ml, they're why mods aren't covered by the TPD in the UK, and they're why the plan to make e-cigs medicinal only, which would have resulted in a defacto ban, never came to pass; it' s not a huge exagerration to state that they are why you (or someone you know) has an e-cig and has been able to stop smoking, or at least severaly cut down their ciggie intake.

They don't want your money (But you know, if you want to...), they don't even need to email you newsletters - but if you give just your name, it gives them a lot more weight when they walk into these groups and can say that they represent 1500+ e-cig users. Ideally that needs to be ten times that number.

Sign up here, it's quite safe and it'll help get your voice heard in the corridors of power, far more than any petition will.

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