Good morning Roly, although ive been off sick my boss has read and responded to this post of yours, this is his response:
Hi Alicia,
Thanks for following this up.
I finished the citations and then converted that post into a PDF as others requested it in a portable format. I'll try to link it below.
[
PDF now updated with live links - see next post]
In reply to J.A.:
J.A.: I have to admit, I was astonished by the sheer detail in rolygate's commentary on my article - which Alicia passed on to me because it was so detailed. It's most illuminating and I take on board a lot of what you say. I would like to make a few further observations and comments based on that:
1. The adoption issue is just plain wrong. I have friends who foster, and my mum was adopted. Last I checked, we have a shortage of foster and adoptive parents in this country. So for every parent rejected because of an e-cigarette, that pretty much means a child will be growing up without a family in a children's home. Is this really what we want? Perhaps I'm preaching to the choir here, but this bugs me.
Yes, there was a lot of negative publicity about that, for good reason. It looks as if the BAAF are changing their policy on this as a result of the feedback they got. PHE and the Daily Mail helped here, and many thanks if you also got involved. The Mail is a bit of a two-edged sword as they'll go with whatever slant gets the scariest headlines - this time it was the indefensible policy of the adoption agency, but usually it's the fear-mongering stories about ecigs. Those probably go down well with their big-budget advertisers, as well.
2. I was already aware of the points you raise on taxation, and the influence of the pharmaceutical companies. As an aside, this is one of the big problems: Brussels has more lobbyists than Washington DC so 'big business' of every kind has a massive competitive advantage over small business. Same issue in Westminster, but to a lesser extent.
Surprised to hear Brussels has as big a lobbying industry as Washington. It may have been a lobbyist I know there who told me there are twice as many lobbyists in DC as Congress reps. In the UK we're extremely lucky that most of the senior public health figures, like Britton and West, are sympathetic to our issues, although this has little effect on core policy as that comes from Brussels. In the US it's the other way round, and the big PH names are lined up against vaping. The immense amount of money probably has something to do with that: Britton's equivalent in the US gets over $6 million a year, so the pressure to protect pharmaceutical industry receipts, State tobacco tax revenues and MSA payments is enormous. One of our problems is that the effect of the US anti-THR money spreads across the world and impacts the EU situation.
3. I'd been thinking about writing about Snus in my original article actually. I decided not to because a) I had a word limit on the article, and b) I think the case for e-cigarettes is harder to attack than the case for Snus anyway.
Agreed. We are always up against the whole problem because THR is not just about ecigs; and the best model is Sweden, where essentially they've beaten smoking as far as the male population is concerned, with zero negative health impact - and we need to use that example as it's the proof it can be done. However, Snus has 23 years of propaganda stacked against it here and so the situation is difficult, bearing in mind that no one is interested in any facts or evidence. Also, there is no Snus user community here as that was strangled at birth, so to speak. Our first job was to ensure they couldn't do that to us as well, and we succeeded there.
We should also stand together with smokers. It is unethical to force people to stop doing something entirely legal and that they pay over the odds to do, and to demonise them so that it's easier to use force. The same people are using the same tactics against us as they use against Snus and smoking. But you have to pick your battles, and to be completely honest it is easier to fight our corner alone and without any association with snusers or smokers. There are no snusers in the UK to speak of (they import their products personally, under the radar), and smokers are a poor ally because the public perception of the smoking issue has been very well managed and distorted by propaganda; and they are an ineffective and disorganised group notable for their poor leadership and lack of support from the industry (who sold them out for a guarantee of continued existence if they didn't make waves). In effect - unfortunately - smokers are toxic.
4. I am most interested by this:
"C.P.: You could also ask how it is possible that a regulatory instrument created by the EU Commissioner with the worst reputation for corruption ever experienced in the EU (who was sacked for corruption) can survive unaltered even though the reason for his dismissal was connected with this new Directive?
You might also ask how it is possible that an EU Commissioner can accumulate a vast personal fortune, with no visible source of income of that magnitude, and subsequently be discovered moving undeclared personal funds of $100 million between offshore banks?
You could also try asking why, when commercially-important regulatory policies that have an enormous effect on public health are implemented in a climate where 10 million bribes are solicited by EU officials, no action appears to be taken to prevent votes being bought on a massive scale, and the public interest is routinely ignored, and public health is sold to the highest bidder?"
You're no doubt referring to John Dalli, although this is well before my time as an MEP so I'm not particularly up to speed on the details. If you could point me in the direction of the specific Directive, I would be grateful.
The Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) rewrite is Dalli's work, and the assumption is that he was paid to create it in order to ban ecigs (as he appears to have been very well-paid in general). It was unaltered when it went into the adoption process at the EU, Tony Borg (the DG SANCO Commissioner who replaced him) just rubber-stamped it.
Dalli is responsible for continuing the Snus ban, and creating the basis for an ecig ban (which has become Article 20 in the new TPD) in the first place. He seems to have done quite well out of it. In the end he was fired after upping his asking price per deal to 10 million, which apparently was more than the market would bear, and multiple whistle-blowers spoke up. He was famous (it is alleged) for employing two personal members of staff whose sole job was to arrange bribes and attend to all the deal-making and back-and-forth this required on such a grand scale, including the physical transport of the funds in cash between offshore banks (allegedly).
5. I take your point on 'substantive' and 'substantial' and the ease of confusion.
6. I wasn't intending to use 'an order of magnitude' as a scientific term; in everyday usage the phrase is more general. I wanted to be general: I don't want to be dragged into an argument over numbers which wouldn't help. If some people were to claim e-cigarettes to be 10% as harmful as regular cigarettes, and others claim it's 0.01%, that distinction may be medically relevant but it isn't relevant to the point of my article, which was essentially to make what should be the blatantly obvious point that a move from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes in society is a good thing.
Understood. (And sorry
)
7. Your comments about nicotine, dependence, addiction and tobacco are most interesting; this is all completely new to me. Something for me to look into when I have a while to spare, perhaps.
Jonathan Arnott MEP
The nicotine issue is crucial for us as it's a cornerstone of the attack on ecigs. Contrary to the propaganda, it's a normal ingredient in the diet, everyone consumes it, and everyone tests positive for it. You feed your baby nicotine in her mashed-up vegetables. It's a nutrient that will probably get a B vitamin number one day when the taboo is over, like its co-located sister nutrient nicotinic acid (vitamin B3 or 'niacin'). People cannot be made dependent on nicotine except when delivered in tobacco, and there is a ton of evidence for this and none whatsoever to contradict it. The most surprising thing for most people is to learn there is no clinical trial or any other evidence that nicotine is 'addictive' - nicotine dependence is caused by smoking and is only seen after tobacco consumption. Hundreds of never-smokers have been given large amounts of nicotine daily for months at a time, and no subject has ever shown the slightest sign of dependence in any form. When smokers switch to vaping, they can gradually reduce the amount of nicotine they consume, and some even remove it eventually.
This means there is no reason, on the current evidence, to believe ecigs will create nicotine dependence.
The propaganda war is the main tool used against us, so it is important we do something to counter it. When all anyone ever hears about ecigs is essentially a catalogue of lies, it is easy to impose regulations that will remove the products from the market. The goal is to block THR and force us back to smoking (and especially to prevent any further slide to vaping) as that's the source of the money pot. The Snus solution worked exceptionally well: blocking the sale of Snus saved smoking in the EU.
Smoking can't be reduced significantly once the 20% Prevalence Rule operates (there is no country which is an exception), so all they have to do is block THR, and then cigarette sales (or more accurately drug sales for treating smoking-related disease, and tobacco tax revenue, as that's what it's all about) are safe.
- Chris Price
Thank you!
