Creme de Vape Blog

You may have heard that the Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency (MHRA) intend to regulate e-cigs as medicinal products within the UK. This is coupled with the EU parliament heading in the same utterly unworkable direction. E-cigs are not medical devices, and nor were they ever intended to be. They are already very well regulated under the general product safety regulations framework, if only Trading Standards departments would properly clamp down on rogue traders who supply electrical goods that fall foul of British and European standards, and refuse to test their e-liquid or even label it properly and legally.

The MHRA have made all sorts of unjustifiable claims that regulating these devices as medicinal devices will make them safer and more effective. There hasn't been one single death attributed to e-cigarette usage, yet in the UK alone, 100,000 people die every year because of smoking.

You can attest to how safe and effective you've found vaping to be. In reality, the continuous pushing to shoe-horn these non-medicinal devices into medicines regulation is nothing about safety, harm-reduction or saving lives, and everything about those that make these decisions on your behalf receiving poor advice and making uneducated assumptions, and facing enormous pressure from both the pharmaceutical industry and the tobacco industry, both of whom are already losing revenue as more and more smokers make the switch to vaping.

If these proposals are forced through, vaping as we know it will die, all the wide variety of devices, atomisers, tanks, cartomisers, liquids and other amazingly wonderful products will be gone. In their place will be a small handful of ineffective, disposable type e-cigs from large pharmaceutical and tobacco companies. Think cig-a-like devices, with measured "doses" of liquid available in one or two flavours and useless for anyone but the very lightest occasional vaper.

We vapers are facing a war, fighting for our right to enjoy our e-cigs as a recreational alternative to traditional tobacco smoking. It needs all of us to do our bit.

What you NEED to do:

1. Sign these two e-petitions here (only UK residents may sign the first one)
   http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51572
   http://www.petitiononline.com/fr33dom/petition.html
    
2. Ask for an e-cigs save lives sticker when you place your next order, and display it on your car, shop window, or indeed anywhere it will be seen - request extras for family and friends too.
    
3. Print out copies of the  E-cigs Save Lives Flyer and distribute them as widely as you possibly can. Your workplace, your local shops, bars and restaurants, anywhere you can to help get the message across.
    
4. Write to your MP and to your MEP, ask what they know about e-cigs, tell them what vaping means to you, and how limiting access to the myriad of different devices will impact you.

There's over one million vapers in the UK now, and it needs every single one of us to make our voice heard to protect our vaping way of life.