In the House of Lords Lord Callanan has put down a motion which if passed would stop implementation of the TPD in the UK. This is a critical development.
Lord Callanan is a hugely experienced senior politician. In the European Parliament he both advised how to campaign against medicalisation and led the successful campaign to block regulation that would have wiped out e-cigarettes. Nobody has been more effective at defending vaping than him.
Unless Lord Callanan is forced by pressure from Downing Street to withdraw his motion there will be a debate and a vote. Under parliamentary rules if the Lords agree to this motion the statutory instrument implementing the TPD in the UK will fall. Such procedures are called “fatal motions” because the regulations get killed outright and do not go back to the Commons.
(For geeks: the Lords have until 10 June to vote against this delegated legislation. That will be the end of the 40 days of “praying time” during which a successful motion can block the statutory instrument. This is the case even though the law has previously gone into effect as the TPD will on 20 May.)
Politics
The Lords are strongly against the TPD rules on vaping as was shown in last week’s debate in the House of Lords.
Government and Opposition
They know there are severe problems with the TPD’s rules on vaping. Government officials have acknowledged that they could increase smoking and the health minister told the Lords that he hoped enforcement would be more ‘Italian’ than traditional British.
The shadow minister said that he could not understand why e-cigarettes were included in the TPD and described opposition to vaping as “bonkers”. Two years ago his boss, Jeremy Corbyn, signed a parliamentary motion against the TPD rules on vaping.
Momentum
As politicians see increasing vaper pressure they are already trying to be creative in finding a solution. Technically the EU could start “infraction proceedings” against the UK for not fully implementing Article 20, but this would prove bad timing. This is not the time encourage anti-EU sentiment!
Why we will succeed
There are more of us.
In 2013, despite huge pressure from the EU commission, vaper power helped swing the day. At that time there were 1.3 million vapers in the UK. Now there are 2.8 million of us.
Political concern
Westminster and Brussels have reasons to be helpful. With top doctors such as the Royal College of Physicians coming out strongly in support of e-cigarettes, politicians are finally seeing the evidence that some of the rules are no longer fit for purpose.
As we saw last week, a majority of vapers want to leave the EU. Politicians (at least those who are in favour of the UK remaining in the EU) will not want to see vapers decide their referendum votes on this single issue.
What you can do
If ever there was a day for vaper power this is it! Last time round, it was the letters and social media support that won so many MEPs to our cause.
So let us respectfully urge our leaders to use the opportunity provided by Lord Callanan’s motion to rethink the specific problems we have with TPD.
Tweet: send your support for the #LordsVapeVote to @Number10gov @jeremycorbyn @MartinCallanan. (Update: #LordsVapeVote is now trending on twitter!)
Petition: Here is one ready to go, and in just a few hours it has already attracted 1000’s of signatures. Add yours now: Petition to Parliament
When vapers work together they are an unstoppable force. If we do not take today’s opportunity presented by Lord Callanan’s initiative then we could have to wait until around 2026 for the next Tobacco Products Directive to be implemented for even a chance of improvement.
So wait ten years – or tweet today like you have never tweeted before.
Thank you to Ian Gregory of Abzed for much of the content of this post.
We urge all vapers and their family and friends to support the European Free Vaping Initiative.
On the 26th of February the European Parliament moved closer to ratifying the Article on electronic cigarettes within the Tobacco Products Directive. This controversial, rushed and unacceptable legislation born of ignorance and in complete absence of scientific evidence, endangers the future of vaping across Europe, putting the health of millions of current and potential future vapers at risk.
The list of the problems with this new regulation is practically endless but put in a nutshell, it will lead to most of the products you currently use being banned. Yes that's right, banned! Whilst they've tried hard to make the new legislation sound completely reasonable and in your benefit, what it will actually do is regulate all of the most effective and innovative vaping products out of existence including cartomisers you can open or refill, tank atomisers that hold more than 2ml of liquid, all rebuildable atomisers, bottles of e-liquid larger than 10ml and all e-liquid with more than 2% nicotine. Basically everything we all use on a daily basis.
The European Free Vaping Initiative has been set up to use the mechanism by which EU citizens can express their common opinion on how the European Parliament should approach certain subjects, in this case vaping. It's not too late to save vaping, but it is essential that every vaper, and all their friends and family members ACT NOW.
Over one million signatures of support must be collected from all across Europe so that the decision makers can no longer continue to ignore us and regulate our products out of existence.
Please, please support this initiative, and also get all your family and friends to support too.
Would you be affected if you could no longer easily buy your vaping supplies? What about if all you could get was e-liquid containing a paltry 4mg/0.4% nicotine? How would you feel about all the smokers who never got to experience the new way of life that you are currently enjoying? Upset? Depressed? Enraged?
Yep, us too, and here's your chance to try to do something about it. Please don't just think it's a lost battle, it is far from it, if YOU take the time to make SURE you have your say...
This article has been reproduced in its entirety from Clive Bate's blog because it gives you all the information you need to know and how to help do something about it to protect our vaping way of life.
On 19th December 2012, the EU produced a a proposal for new laws controlling tobacco and nicotine products like e-cigarettes. The proposal includes a justification for the measures with draft legal text and comes with supporting documentation. It covers a wide range of issues, including: labelling and warnings on cigarette packs; branding restrictions; control of flavours and additives; tracking and tracing to prevent smuggling and counterfeiting; and measures that apply to smokeless tobacco products and nicotine-containing products like e-cigarettes.
The proposed directive contains measures that make it harder or impossible for smokers to switch from cigarettes to much less dangerous nicotine products – an approach that will cause much more death and disease than it prevents. If you smoke, use e-cigarettes, or if have friends or relatives that smoke, or if you are concerned about the health damage from smoking, then this directive matters to you.
If you want to write to your MP or MEPs, the main information you need together with my advice is set out below. More detailed briefing on the directive is available here and on influencing the scrutiny process is here. A good political article on the directive here. A good background video on tobacco harm reduction here.
The European Union has proposed legislation that would ban, or effectively ban, nicotine products that people can (and do) use as much less dangerous alternatives to smoking cigarettes – for example, smokeless tobacco, e-cigarettes, vapour devices, or other novel ways of taking nicotine that don’t involve burning tobacco. Although the risk is reduced by 95-99% if there is no smoke, Europe still thinks it is better to ban these products even though they are a potential life-saver for people who can’t or don’t want to give up nicotine. If you use these products yourself, they are restricting your options and adding to your health risks. Background information on ‘tobacco harm reduction’ here
The proposed new law (an EU directive) does three main bad things:
1. Bans the safest tobacco products. It bans the least hazardous form of tobacco known to mankind – snus – whilst allowing cigarettes to be widely sold. Snus (or oral tobacco) is much less dangerous than cigarettes, and widely used in Sweden, where it is the main reason why Sweden has much lower rates of cancer and other smoking-related disease than anywhere else in Europe.
Why ban these products when they have been so successful at reducing harm in Sweden?
2. Treats e-cigarettes as though they are medicines – effectively banning or marginalising them. It places most non-tobacco nicotine products, like e-cigarettes, under the highly restrictive regulation regime used for medicinal products. This requires the manufacturers or distributors to justify them for their therapeutic effect and to demonstrate that benefits outweigh the risks – even though that may be obvious to most people, it is potentially difficult to do it to scientific standards. In fact these are really consumer products chosen by consumers as an alternative to smoking the most unhealthy forms of nicotine rather than medicines – and should be judged as alternatives to cigarettes. Depending on the attitude of medicines regulators this type of regulation could have the several negative effects. It could:
The directive treats e-cigarettes below a certain threshold as consumer products. The very weakest form of e-cigarettes (with liquids below threshold of nicotine density 4mg/ml) might escape medicines regulation. But these are extremely weak in e-cigarette terms, and not regarded as adequate substitutes for conventional cigarettes and unlikely to do much to help people switch from smoking. More on this in my briefing on the directive.
Why would governments make it harder to put these products on the market than the much more dangerous products they are designed to replace or compete with? Read novelist Lionel Shriver (We need to talk about Kevin) on Puritans and the powerful – and tobacco smokers – can’t take the fact that electronic cigarettes are harmless and enjoyable
3. Prevents any claim that one tobacco product is less harmful than another. The trouble is that the truth is that smokeless tobacco products may be many times less harmful than cigarettes, perhaps 10-1000 times less harmful. So what looks like an attempt to stop false or excessive claims, is actually going to do real harm:
This makes a law out of misleading consumers – who benefits from it?
Yes it does – the health of real people is at stake. Smoking already kills 700,000 and costs €25 billion in health care costs in Europe annually (about 100,000 and £3.7 billion for the UK) [source]. Quit rates remain stubbornly low despite years of effort and drug development – and 28% of European adults still smoke (about 21% in the UK) despite almost universal knowledge of the dangers. Most smokers say they would like to quit and most say they wish they had never started. Some like a nicotine hit and some of the ritual that goes with smoking, but we know that if safer alternatives can be found people will use them them. There is a grave danger that people denied much safer alternatives will either lapse back to smoking or never be able to try these ways of giving up smoking. I have never seen a directive where the evidence so clearly points to it causing more death and disease – it is reckless, irresponsible, unscientific and unethical.
Your Member of Parliament (MP) represents you in the UK, and several Members of the European Parliament represent you in matters to do with the European Parliament. Both MPs and MEPs have a role to play on the tobacco directive, so it is best to to write to both. Your MP can approach UK government ministers and ask them to influence the directive as it passes through the European Council (comprised of ministers of the member states). Your MEPs can influence the European Parliament scrutiny of the directive, propose amendments and influence the stance taken by political groupings in the European Parliament. If they are members of the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee, they will be involved more directly in scrutinising the directive.
The simplest way to do this is to access www.writetothem.com. This is an excellent service: you enter your postcode; it works out who your MP and MEPs are (you will have several MEPs) then sets up e-mails for you to send them. You enter your own text and address details and then follow the procedure on the site and it will send your letter. Once you have drawn up a good letter that covers most of the points you want to get across you can use it for lots of different purposes – customising and personalising for each if you want to make an impact.
For non-UK readers. For non-UK readers, I have less information – but all MEPs can be located here – and information on how different national parliaments scrutinise EU legislation can be found here. Your can follow many of the tips here and tailor for your national situation.
Some Tips on Writing to MPs and MEPs
If you want to write on proper paper and post a letter, you can use the www.writetothem.com site to find out their names and then post a letter (stamp to Brussels is 87p for a letter). The addresses are:
Their Name MP
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
Their Name MEP
European Parliament
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels
Belgium
It is important that you write in your own words, based on your own experience and express your own views. I must stress this – authenticity really matters.
6.1 A good letter to an MP or MEP might have the following main components:
6.2 Reasons why the directive might be bad
You don’t need to use any or all of these, but they might help you construct a letter. Remember to personalise these to reflect your own situation where possible.
6.3 What should be done?
These are a few suggestions from me.. please pick ones that matter to you, add your own views and use your own words.
6.4 What you could ask your MP or MEPs to do…
Write to your MP and MEPs – you need slightly different letters because they have different roles and can do different things:
If you do write to a representative, then you could leave a copy of your letter here in the comments as an inspiration for others.
If you have questions about the directive or disagreements with Clive's interpretation or advice, please comment on his blog and he’ll respond, and change as necessary.
Here's Clive talking to Dave Dorn on VaperTrails TV
This article has been reproduced in its entirety from Clive Bate's blog because it gives you all the information you need to know and how to help do something about it to protect our vaping way of life.