EU Some excellent new articles on the EU directive

[Oliver]

Open letter from Clive Bates to Linda McAven on the workshop: Tobacco products directive – poor legislation harmful to health « The counterfactual
Commentary on the workshop by Konstantions Farsolinos: http://www.ecigarette-research.com/web/index.php/component/content/article?id=105
Spiked online article on the whole process: spiked | The new EU directive: quit smoking or die

 

[Numpty]

The EU's JURI committee (legal affairs) has recommended that the ENVI committee remove e-cigarettes and certain other proposals from the proposed TPD.

This is excellent news for us as it indicates that somebody in the EU has actually looked at the public health issues instead of blindly following the EU / pharmaceutical and cigarette industry agenda to protect cigarette sales at any cost.

The JURI committee's recommendations in brief are:

- Remove e-cigarettes entirely from the TPD for two reasons:
- Less harmful alternatives to smoking are required
- The inclusion of e-cigarettes would not stand up to legal challenge
- Remove certain clauses that would delegate wide-ranging powers to the EU's committees and would remove those powers from the democratic process
- Remove or amend certain plain packaging requirements and similar measures for cigarettes


Well that is very good news for us.

Source here (Rolygate):

EU - JURI committee recommends removal of ecigs from the TPD

And the committe report here (PDF)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/...F%2bV0%2f%2fEN


yes - the letters, emails etc to MEPs have been working after all - keep up the pressure, do not relax now !

 

[Bill Godshall]

Here's an article about the May 7 EU ENVI Cmte workshop
E-cigarettes: safer alternative to tobacco or potential health risk?

 

[mgomez]

Peter Liese, a German member of the EPP group, added: "E-cigarettes are dangerous, especially when they are not properly manufactured, so we cannot just leave them unregulated."

I hope I don't ruffle any feathers, but this is preposterous. I've heard of isolated incidents where e-cigs catch fire or explode, but it's still completely insane to regulate them. Why? We must first ask two questions before any legislation:

1) Compared to what?
2) At what cost?

Let's rephrase those questions for this case:

1) How does the amount of deaths from improperly-manufactured e-cigs compare to the amount of slow deaths from traditional analog cigarettes?
2) What are we not seeing here? Who will suffer/benefit as a result of this legislation?

Answers:

1) There have been no deaths so far from e-cigs, badly manufactured or not. Some guy knocking his teeth out doesn't warrant sweeping legislations to regulate e-cigs because:
2) We will end up destroying the innovative engine that developed e-cigs in the first place. The majority of major motor corporations today started out their journeys manufacturing vehicles that today would be illegal to drive around because of all the regulations built around the automotive industry today.

It all goes back to: If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; if it stops moving, subsidize it. Think about it: Government regulates tobacco insanely, but it subsidizes the growth of tobacco. Does that sound like something logical?

 

[Berylanna]

It all goes back to: If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; if it stops moving, subsidize it. Think about it: Government regulates tobacco insanely, but it subsidizes the growth of tobacco. Does that sound like something logical?

It's called empire-building. It's also, I think, a part of our Limbic system, a will-to-effectiveness. We all want to be important, we all want to be "called" to something for our community, and this very EASILY leads people in groups to think that their function is the most-important function. Witness mgmt laying off workers and engineers while hiring more mgmt. Managers want to think mgmt is really important, regulators want to thing regulation is crucial, sales personnel think it's all about their sales skills. We all need to be needed.

They are not going to give up on that, it's too human. I think that, beyond fighting them the way we have been (showing then they are WRONG!) we also need to find them something to do that actually WOULD be crucial. (And don't let them grow, because then they'll have too much free time again and go looking for something else to regulate!)

Let them work on bird-flu-reaction scenarios. Or Q.A. for foods from countries with bad Q.A. Or something.

 

[mgomez]

You've just underlined a political statement I make all too often: We need politicians who know how to use a veto pen. Vetoing with impunity is better than passing laws with a God complex.