CALL TO ACTION - WE ARE ALMOST AT 1000 SIGNATURES.
PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THE BELOW EMAIL AND SEND TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.
(If you have already done so, please share with family and friends, we need as many signatures as possible)
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Dear Mr Groote,
Millions of lives depend on MEPs doing the right thing when revising the tobacco Products Directive
We are writing to you in your capacity as Chairman of the European Parliaments Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety Committee, as former tobacco smokers from across the EU who have quit or reduced smoking through the use of e-cigarettes.
For between five and seven million people throughout the EU, e-cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes. They have enabled them to leave smoking behind, either on a full or part-time basis. These people, like us, are now smoking far fewer or no cigarettes. Figures from the United States show that in one year alone, Altria, the company behind cigarette brands like Malboro, saw a six and a half per cent decline in cigarette sales, directly attributed to a rise in the use of e-cigarettes. If e-cigarettes are allowed to continue to flourish, just imagine how many fewer cigarettes will be sold and lives saved as millions more people like us switch from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes.
However, we are genuinely concerned that the positive story of e-cigarettes may be about to come to an abrupt halt.
As you will be aware, proposals to amend the Tobacco Products Directive state that e-cigarettes should only be placed on the market if they are authorised pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC (the Medicinal Products Directive).
By regulating e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and by banning flavours, the Commission and its supporters in Parliament and Council are effectively banning e-cigarettes, as the Parliaments own Legal Affairs Committee has made clear.
E-cigarettes are not a medicinal product and as users we do not see ourselves as ill or in treatment; we are not.
We are adults and the e-cigarettes that we use are regulated as a consumer product by at least 17 Directives at the EU level and by a variety of other legislation at the Member State level. They are safe, by contrast tobacco cigarettes kill 700,000 people each and every year and neither the Commission nor Parliament is proposing to ban them!
The key health benefit of e-cigarettes is determined by how many smokers switch to them or use them as a staging post to quitting completely. It is therefore vital that e-cigarettes continue to be regulated as a consumer product.
Many of us have tried numerous times to quit smoking using conventional nicotine replacement therapies and have failed, however with e-cigarettes we have all cut down our smoking or stopped completely.
Without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers like us have been quitting, switching, and cutting down through the use of e-cigarettes. This is something that should be celebrated not a cause for concern.
E-cigarettes are however not some form of more effective nicotine replacement therapy, they are totally different. E-cigarettes deliver clean nicotine without the tar, carbon monoxide, and volatile hot gases of cigarettes and as a way of taking nicotine they are pretty near harmless to health. In short, for people like us who switch from cigarettes, they hugely reduce risk, while satisfying our need for the drug nicotine and some of the behavioural aspects of smoking. We believe that making the informed choice of switching from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes has dramatically improved our health and our chances of living longer, healthier lives. With this in mind we would like to ask members of your committee this very simple question. Why would the EU want to intervene to prevent or obstruct a smoker having access to products that could potentially save his or her life? The reality is that every barrier placed in the way of e-cigarettes should be viewed in this light and with its consequences for health.
Do MEPs really want to protect an industry that kills 700,000 people at the expense of a market-based, consumer-led public health revolution that has the potential to save millions of lives?
E-cigarettes have the astonishing potential to disrupt the business model of the established tobacco industry. However, rather than encouraging this, these proposals subject them to disproportionate and discriminatory regulation by misclassifying them as medicines, thus increasing costs and compliance burdens, imposing restrictions, driving out innovation, and potentially destroying existing supply chains.
As users of e-cigarettes, we urge members of your committee to reject Article 18 of the Commissions proposal. We believe it is poorly thought through, contains an arbitrary and pointless threshold, takes an easy short cut by applying medicines regulation rather than designing appropriate regulation, and has been prepared without proper consultation of the industry and users like us.
Members of your committee should insist that the Commission starts again and does a thorough job, looking properly at all the regulatory options and only once it has done the necessary work, bring forward proposals. In the meantime, Member States should enforce the existing legislation properly and report on what they are doing.
For the sake of seven million e-cigarette users and the millions of potential e-cigarette users we urge you to do the right thing.
Yours sincerely
please send to: campaign@totallywicked-eliquid.co.uk
PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THE BELOW EMAIL AND SEND TO THE EMAIL ADDRESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.
(If you have already done so, please share with family and friends, we need as many signatures as possible)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mr Groote,
Millions of lives depend on MEPs doing the right thing when revising the tobacco Products Directive
We are writing to you in your capacity as Chairman of the European Parliaments Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety Committee, as former tobacco smokers from across the EU who have quit or reduced smoking through the use of e-cigarettes.
For between five and seven million people throughout the EU, e-cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes. They have enabled them to leave smoking behind, either on a full or part-time basis. These people, like us, are now smoking far fewer or no cigarettes. Figures from the United States show that in one year alone, Altria, the company behind cigarette brands like Malboro, saw a six and a half per cent decline in cigarette sales, directly attributed to a rise in the use of e-cigarettes. If e-cigarettes are allowed to continue to flourish, just imagine how many fewer cigarettes will be sold and lives saved as millions more people like us switch from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes.
However, we are genuinely concerned that the positive story of e-cigarettes may be about to come to an abrupt halt.
As you will be aware, proposals to amend the Tobacco Products Directive state that e-cigarettes should only be placed on the market if they are authorised pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC (the Medicinal Products Directive).
By regulating e-cigarettes as a medicinal product, and by banning flavours, the Commission and its supporters in Parliament and Council are effectively banning e-cigarettes, as the Parliaments own Legal Affairs Committee has made clear.
E-cigarettes are not a medicinal product and as users we do not see ourselves as ill or in treatment; we are not.
We are adults and the e-cigarettes that we use are regulated as a consumer product by at least 17 Directives at the EU level and by a variety of other legislation at the Member State level. They are safe, by contrast tobacco cigarettes kill 700,000 people each and every year and neither the Commission nor Parliament is proposing to ban them!
The key health benefit of e-cigarettes is determined by how many smokers switch to them or use them as a staging post to quitting completely. It is therefore vital that e-cigarettes continue to be regulated as a consumer product.
Many of us have tried numerous times to quit smoking using conventional nicotine replacement therapies and have failed, however with e-cigarettes we have all cut down our smoking or stopped completely.
Without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers like us have been quitting, switching, and cutting down through the use of e-cigarettes. This is something that should be celebrated not a cause for concern.
E-cigarettes are however not some form of more effective nicotine replacement therapy, they are totally different. E-cigarettes deliver clean nicotine without the tar, carbon monoxide, and volatile hot gases of cigarettes and as a way of taking nicotine they are pretty near harmless to health. In short, for people like us who switch from cigarettes, they hugely reduce risk, while satisfying our need for the drug nicotine and some of the behavioural aspects of smoking. We believe that making the informed choice of switching from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes has dramatically improved our health and our chances of living longer, healthier lives. With this in mind we would like to ask members of your committee this very simple question. Why would the EU want to intervene to prevent or obstruct a smoker having access to products that could potentially save his or her life? The reality is that every barrier placed in the way of e-cigarettes should be viewed in this light and with its consequences for health.
Do MEPs really want to protect an industry that kills 700,000 people at the expense of a market-based, consumer-led public health revolution that has the potential to save millions of lives?
E-cigarettes have the astonishing potential to disrupt the business model of the established tobacco industry. However, rather than encouraging this, these proposals subject them to disproportionate and discriminatory regulation by misclassifying them as medicines, thus increasing costs and compliance burdens, imposing restrictions, driving out innovation, and potentially destroying existing supply chains.
As users of e-cigarettes, we urge members of your committee to reject Article 18 of the Commissions proposal. We believe it is poorly thought through, contains an arbitrary and pointless threshold, takes an easy short cut by applying medicines regulation rather than designing appropriate regulation, and has been prepared without proper consultation of the industry and users like us.
Members of your committee should insist that the Commission starts again and does a thorough job, looking properly at all the regulatory options and only once it has done the necessary work, bring forward proposals. In the meantime, Member States should enforce the existing legislation properly and report on what they are doing.
For the sake of seven million e-cigarette users and the millions of potential e-cigarette users we urge you to do the right thing.
Yours sincerely
please send to: campaign@totallywicked-eliquid.co.uk
