Consumers can get around EU snus ban by buying online

[Bill Godshall]

Absurd EU snus sales ban doesn't stop consumers from buying products online
Smokeless tobacco sold illegally online, UK researchers find
How online sales and promotion of snus contravenes current European Union legislation -- Peeters and Gilmore -- Tobacco Control

Seems like a similar situation exists for e-cigarette purchases from consumers in countries where sales are banned.

 

[rothenbj]

The apparent willingness of the tobacco industry to contravene EU and Swedish legislation and profit from unlawful sales raises questions about their status as stakeholders in consultations on future policy developments. The findings highlight how national and regional tobacco control legislation can be undermined in an increasingly globalised world.

So they want to take stakeholder status away from the tobacco industry because their distributors are willing to meet market demand, beautiful.

Yet this study indicates that snus vendors cannot be trusted to act responsibly and that, consequently, overturning the ban could be a threat to public health.”

The only thing overturning the ban would be a threat to is Pharma profits, NOT public health.

 

[rolygate]

This looks like another preemptive attack on safe tobacco alternatives, before the rewrite of the EU Tobacco Directive.

By claiming that Snus vendors are irresponsible, it can be made to appear that the EU ban on Snus should not be reversed because even if the product is safe, the vendors are as bad as the regular tobacco industry is/was.

The worst possible outcome of an EU tobacco directive rewrite for the tobacco control industry would be free availability of Snus and e-cigarettes. Eventually the death rate would fall by 50% or so and that would leave them unemployed, since their jobs would become all but irrelevant. If all smokers converted to Snus or e-cigarettes, the EU smoking mortality rate would be reduced from 650,000 annually to such a minuscule figure that coffee drinking might become an equally-scrutinised activity. This would be the tobacco controllers' worst nightmare: no deaths from tobacco.

It's interesting to note that obscene amounts of money are available for these pointless research projects. Think how many lives could be saved in poor countries if the gross sums of money expended on such useless endeavours were to be spent properly instead of flushed down the toilet of tobacco control. In fact, think how many lives could be saved in Europe. I wonder how much cash was burnt in this project compared to the infamous $850,000 YouTube video watching farce?

 

[DC2]

Another episde of "As the Stomach Turns" brought to you by the liars, cheats, and prohibitionists.

EDIT: For those of you in the EU that was a play on the long running soap opera "As the World Turns".
EDIT: Not that knowing that makes it any funnier.