Here we have the epitome of rotten legislation, law which will cause the loss of thousands of lives. Finally, long after the horse has bolted, we get something near a proper parliamentary debate - in the good old house of lords, of course, not that alleged (falsely) bastion of "representative governance", the commons.
Debater Lord Callanan is the ennobled Martin Callanan, the former Conservative MEP, who responded to the fears of vapers, and others just interested in good health and the evils of bad legislation, by notably championing the pro vaping cause in the EU "parliament."
It's apparent from Lord Prior's responses for the government here that it now takes a rather benign, almost enthusiastic attitude to vaping (the prime minister's own comments add to that impression). It realises the earlier position on planning medicalization of all vaping products (before the matter was taken out of the hands of national "governments" and into the claws of the imperial power for all EU member "countries") was wrongheaded, that the screeching voices demonizing vaping were scaremongering, using fibs and fabrication, including what is called in the debate, "junk science". One might have responded to this with the "glory be the sinners who repenteth" stuff, if the sinners in question hadn't done their bit before to get this Devil's directive implemented.
The chances of getting a repeal, or even significant amendment, to the relevant parts of the TPD through the EU system, must be virtually zilch in any future that's foreseeable. However, the chances of getting repeal/significant amendment if the UK regains its legislative independence, would now seem very good indeed. I can't share the opinion of some that there would be no advantage in Brexit as far as the TPD is concerned, given the UK government's previous moves to medicalize vaping, and the past hostility of several key parts of the British state/Establishment to e-cigs (a view I believe held by the influential pro vaping polemicist Clive Bates). The reports by public health England and the RCP, and even the humiliating defeat of Drakeford by the Welsh Assembly, are (or would have been) domestic game changers in the great vaping controversy - strengthening the rational justifications for these products - blowing a large hole in the bad ship "Domestic Prohibitionism". Unfortunately the EU's monstrous flagship of prohibitionism is pretty much immune to such volleys of rationality and truth, their affect on it being as futile as a hapless mouse trying to kill the elephant about to tread on him by squeaking.
What Lord Prior has to say here strengthens me in my belief that I'm correct on this, and those who say "it will make no difference", aren't. There's little doubt that the advertizing ban would go (Lord Prior could only resort to the wretched, discredited "think of the children" nonsense in his feeble attempt to justify it - and it didn't seem as if his heart was in it). Though we must always be aware of the dangers posed by the Drakeford types domestically, I believe there is every reason to hold the view that we would make ourselves free of the vaping restrictions relatively quickly once out of the EU.
The prospect of returning to that liberal market in these products which we are now about to lose; the saving of thousands of lives which will be lost because we cannot decide for ourselves on such key matters of domestic policy, should rather concentrate the minds of those wavering between "in" and "out" - and one might hope it will do the same for those who currently intend to support the cause which, if victorious, will see us continue to be governed (and governed in more and more areas of life) by the villains who gave us the TPD (and whose legislation, once imposed on a member "state", will be virtually impossible to repeal or even significantly reform).
