PETITION! Act now to stop the EU vape tax!

[MambaMan]

Are you the official arbiter of what vaping is? Because that's a big pile of bovine excrement right on my computer screen. The reason vaping works for so many people is because there's a wide variety of ways to vape, if tootling works for you, fine, enjoy it, but don't go around saying it's the "correct way" to vape

Like that wasn't illegal before the TPD...
The diacetyl thing is ridiculous, you cite Farsalinos but you don't seem to have read what his opinion on the diacetyl hype was. As to the olive oil, this is the first time since I started vaping (5 years) that I hear of such a thing. Who sold olive oil in eliquid? Source?

The TPD infantilizes adults, assuming they can't handle nicotine higher than 20mg/ml in bottles bigger than 10ml so if you buy 1L you have 100 little plastic bottles. Requiring a "leak free" refill mechanism and child proof tanks (both not yet implemented because the definitions are still being made right now but there's already lawsuits saying such-and-such device isn't child safe). Implementing a 6 months waiting period for importers of vape gear in which nothing at all happens, driving business away from local vape shops and into China. That's also where people buy nicotine base with higher than allowed nic level, I'm sure China of all countries will have impeccable ingredients, it's a lot safer now, genius move

And it's not over yet, the TPD3 will come as soon as they have a little time to spare.

Was there some kind of regulation necessary? Probably yes. Did it have to be this kind of misguided and science defying steaming load of legislation? Hell no.

(Edited)

By the way, where I live. It is ILLEGAL to buy from foreign shops. It includes every single product that is related to e-cigarettes. Have heard that people tried ordering RDA screws and got caught ... The customs have also upgraded their game, bought better x-ray scanners, researching foreign sites, doing test buys to get more info about the products and etc etc.
In addition in my country, vapers don't buy that much from foreign e-shops. Maybe 5-10% of the total DIY vaping section buys things from foreign online shops. DIY holds like 5% of the market, while 95% is the regular vaping industry.

For now you can try and order from foreign shops, but the future also the ORDERING part will be illegal and you will be fined. Right now you can try, but if you get caught you will be fined, up to few thousand euros. Products will be confiscated and destroyed and orderer will lose the money + the products and probably will end up with a decent fine.

As for the diaccetyl, I have had more than 10 encounters with it. When I first started vaping, I ordered some regular e-liquids from Poland and they melted my plastic tanks. Took it to a friend of mine, who works at a lab, they ran tests and discovered there was a good amount of diacetyl in it.
And no, it was no bad batch, tried the same liquid few years after and it was the same ...

Close to same thing about oils and olive oil, went into the lab, ran tests.

(Edited)

For a DIY vaper of course the TPD sucks, but as I said, vaping is for smokers to quit smoking.

Also, thanks for having an argument with me. I always enjoy a great discussion.

 

[MambaMan]

Are you a politician? That is pure politician logic. You may as well have said "Bicycles need to be regulated because hobbyists are using them to do dangerous tricks. Jumping off of things, riding where they shouldn't, etc. Cycling is about getting a person from point A to point B without wasting gas." WRONG!!! It is about whatever the owner of the bike wants it to be about. The same can be said of vaping, or any other product really.

Funny thing is, that in my country (I live in EU). Bicycles are not regulated or the laws are very outdated.
More and more people use them now and it is driving the car drivers crazy and for now in the eye of the law, they are THE GODS. The worst thing is, bikers are freakin' sassy. Some even drive in the middle of the road and then make faces when car drivers flip them off or honk at them ... Crazy

 

[Upinsmoke]

My old man used to say , all government is evil , the more government you have the more evil it becomes.
Western governments have taken to believing their role is to micromanage every aspect of our lives. Such thinking will not end well.
This petition has certainly divided people. The tone of appeasement towards TPD though obviously designed to be pragmatic doesn't play well to the hard-core vaper.
Appeasement in Europe has a sorry history.
We seem to be blindly walking into a totalitarian state , no amount of voting or peaceful protest will stop this .
Britain's attempt to break away will I believe end in failure.
P J O'Rourke said it best.

 

[Rossum]

(Edited)

By the way, where I live. It is ILLEGAL to buy from foreign shops. It includes every single product that is related to e-cigarettes. Have heard that people tried ordering RDA screws and got caught ... The customs have also upgraded their game, bought better x-ray scanners, researching foreign sites, doing test buys to get more info about the products and etc etc.
In addition in my country, vapers don't buy that much from foreign e-shops. Maybe 5-10% of the total DIY vaping section buys things from foreign online shops. DIY holds like 5% of the market, while 95% is the regular vaping industry.

For now you can try and order from foreign shops, but the future also the ORDERING part will be illegal and you will be fined. Right now you can try, but if you get caught you will be fined, up to few thousand euros. Products will be confiscated and destroyed and orderer will lose the money + the products and probably will end up with a decent fine.

As for the diaccetyl, I have had more than 10 encounters with it. When I first started vaping, I ordered some regular e-liquids from Poland and they melted my plastic tanks. Took it to a friend of mine, who works at a lab, they ran tests and discovered there was a good amount of diacetyl in it.
And no, it was no bad batch, tried the same liquid few years after and it was the same ...

Close to same thing about oils and olive oil, went into the lab, ran tests.
(Edited)


For a DIY vaper of course the TPD sucks, but as I said, vaping is for smokers to quit smoking.

Also, thanks for having an argument with me. I always enjoy a great discussion.

Well, I can totally understand why the owner of a vape shop would approve of regulations that make DIY difficult and leave people little choice but to buy e-liquid from him, 10ml at a time.

 

[MK-7]

EDIT:
Nevermind, prefer to stay quiet and observe

 

[Zakillah]

What? The TPD has somehow become a good thing in the view of whoever wrote this petition?

One explaination I heard pro TPD was that otherwise vaping products could have been classified as medicine products; which would cause that they could only be sold in pharmacies.

Which, of course, would be alot worse then the TPD.

 

[ScottP]

Here is the bottom line.
IF you live in the EU and oppose this tax, then sign the petition, otherwise, don't sign it.

 

[Maytwin]

At the time of the TPD I thought all the politicians/bureaucrats were just simply clueless when it came to vaping and is why e-cigarettes were included in a Tobacco Products Directive. Cynical me now thinks perhaps they knew exactly what they were doing when they included them.

In any event, I live in the EU, definitely oppose this tax and have signed the petition. That in no way indicates that I'm happy about the TPD because I'm not in any shape or form.

 

[sonicbomb]

The TPD sucks
This tax also sucks
Petition signed, not that I believe it will make the slightest difference.

 

[stols001]

England at least has had biking laws, at least to my knowledge. My English BF while I was there had received at LEAST one BUI (Biking while intoxicated.) IDK about America frankly. I think it might be a "public intoxicated charge, but I'm not 100% sure what it would be if like, a collision with an automobile happened. I also don't really plan to look it up.

As far as the petition I only have a couple things to say: I did not know that about international petitions, so I won't be signing this one and it's useful information.

For those facing EU legislation, well, I have to say, I'm not the biggest fan of globalism and this is why. The larger the government, the harder it is to fight.

England is complex, they do approach it from a harm reduction stance. BUT, TPD TOTALLY favors MTL vapers, it just does. I don't really MIND filling up a 2 ml tank and honestly, the flavor is better. If I were vaping sub0hm however, I would HATE IT VERY MUCH and TPD finances and legislation seem to ALSO favor MTL financially, as it were.

Since there are vapers who were only able to successfully quit using sub0hm vaping, TPD is the suck for them. Is it better or worse than the proposed legislation I am not sure. I will say, I SALUTE Britain for leading the harm reduction fight and being reasonable about its STATUS, but TPD is NOT great.

Neither is the legislation and probably neither is the legislation that will be coming from the FDA.

Stock up AND fight is STILL a valid strategy and I do BOTH and I don't think it makes me EVIL either not even the slightest amount. Etc.

Anna

 

[MambaMan]

Here is the bottom line.
IF you live in the EU and oppose this tax, then sign the petition, otherwise, don't sign it.

Thanks for the support!

 

[dripster]

What exactly do you folks hope to achieve by clicking on a button that's hosted on a website the domain of which is owned by some company located in San Fransisco and is known to mostly just grab personal data, probably to make a profit and even more probably only for the sake of making a profit?

 

[SleeZy]

(Edited)

(Edited)

For a DIY vaper of course the TPD sucks, but as I said, vaping is for smokers to quit smoking.

Uhm i've agreed yet disagreed on some of your stance when i'm reading it through again.
However TPD doesn't only suck for us DIY-ers. Why do you think we've all those so called "shortfills" now? It's to circumvent the 10ml limit by selling a bigger ammount of premade liquid that you add nicotine yourself. Which is very limited unless you want to dilute it way to much. These shortfills usualy come in 3-6mg at best advertised as 30ml or 50ml "ready made" juice once you add nic shot to them. These shortfills costs about 17-25$ for most brands. So essentially after you added nicshots to your liking you're near 30-40$ territory for 50ml 3-6mg liquid.

Where as we before could buy 30ml/50 or even yaeliq 100ml for just 10$ or even less. Gone are those days.

Ye sure you can still buy 10ml Liqua or hangsen or other crap brands. But if you want good e juice now it's expensive as hell vs before.

The tax will make this even worse, and more expensive.

I personally used to buy 100mls high nic and DIY myself a lot and it made it super cheap lasted me many months, which is also why i'm so against these so called shortfills, which is essentially DIY for dummies. Just to circumvent the TPD. AND it got a lot more expensive and limited (3-6mg). So i know they're not worth the hefty price sums they charge. It was rare to see even premium juices over 20$ per 30ml, now it's the norm thanks to this crap, and now they want to make it worse.

Sorry if i'm abit fuzzy writting, had some beers tonight but i feelt i had to adress that now that i finally found this topic again after it vanished. But after re-reading here i can assume why it vanished.

What exactly do you folks hope to achieve by clicking on a button that's hosted on a website the domain of which is owned by some company located in San Fransisco and is known to mostly just grab personal data, probably to make a profit and even more probably only for the sake of making a profit?

You actually got a point there, i initally didn't notice it was change, however it's better to do something than do nothing. It's worth a shot. It shows interest and might spark some idea somewhere around the politicians to slightly change their mind, which has sort of happened in the UK lately.

Also from a personal example. Us vanilla world of warcraft players wanted a vanilla server for the longest time. Blizzard just reddiculed us and said "you think you do, but you dont" After a huge change.org campain. Look who changed?
Blizzard is now going to start host a vanilla server, mostly due loss of revenue otherwise i'd bet due private scene has gone so big. Anyway abit of topic, but that petition which was only 200k out of about a milion needed, succeded.

So ye any petition is better than none imo.

Edit: Also here's a quick video of what i refer to, here's an ex blizzard employe explaining the situation, which succeded.

 

[dripster]

You actually got a point there, i initally didn't notice it was change, however it's better to do something than do nothing. It's worth a shot. It shows interest and might spark some idea somewhere around the politicians to slightly change their mind, which has sort of happened in the UK lately.

Also from a personal example. Us vanilla world of warcraft players wanted a vanilla server for the longest time. Blizzard just reddiculed us and said "you think you do, but you dont" After a huge change.org campain. Look who changed?
Blizzard is now going to start host a vanilla server, mostly due loss of revenue otherwise i'd bet due private scene has gone so big. Anyway abit of topic, but that petition which was only 200k out of about a milion needed, succeded.

So ye any petition is better than none imo.

Edit: Also here's a quick video of what i refer to, here's an ex blizzard employe explaining the situation, which succeded.

The main problem is we can't even know for sure if the effect is going to be anything close to a real petition or not, as we aren't actually giving our real signatures by clicking on that button, and, by basically handing them over your Facebook account they just pocket your privacy data in order to sell it to marketing giants whose motives might not wholly be in line with the kind of change you had envisioned so, I used to play my rogue in World of Warcraft (day one), I know exactly what this looks like: it's a shady dealer! /dance

 

[Newmikey]

Hmm, I'm never into so-called petitions - mostly wasted effort. The EU questionnaire is something else though and I did go through that. Suppose I do get some of the points the TPD set out to achieve. Jumping up and down is not going to change anything and any attempt at making e-liquids subject to excise duties (like energy, alcohol and tobacco) may just fizzle out all by itself as the admin overhead will be excessive and with e-commerce, hard to police.

 

[untar]

any attempt at making e-liquids subject to excise duties (like energy, alcohol and tobacco) may just fizzle out all by itself as the admin overhead will be excessive and with e-commerce, hard to police.

It may even be impossible, for a EU tax every single member state has a veto power, you'd have to get all members to agree on one thing. Don't see that happening.
Every state can already levy taxes on eliquid as they like and some of them will prefer to keep it that way.

 

[Maytwin]

The main problem is we can't even know for sure if the effect is going to be anything close to a real petition or not, as we aren't actually giving our real signatures by clicking on that button, and, by basically handing them over your Facebook account they just pocket your privacy data in order to sell it to marketing giants whose motives might not wholly be in line with the kind of change you had envisioned so, I used to play my rogue in World of Warcraft (day one), I know exactly what this looks like: it's a shady dealer! /dance

I completely get your point but as the petition has been put together by various bona fide vaping organisations who do a lot on our behalf, I was happy to sign it. I also replied to the EU questionnaire linked to in the petition that @Newmikey mentioned above.

 

[MJCSD]