EU Times Reports ASH-MHRA Stitch-Up

[Toby]

City Diary: A deal agreed in smokeless rooms | The Times

Eyebrows were raised when a dominant anti-smoking charity in effect co-chaired a government announcement this summer on tighter regulation of electronic cigarettes.

The relationship between Action on Smoking and Health and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, though, is closer still, City Diary has found. More than 150 pages of e-mails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act went back and forth between Deborah Arnott, ASH’s chief executive, and Jeremy Mean, the MHRA official who led the review of electronic cigarettes, in the six months leading up to the announcement in June.

The pair were in contact on a range of matters, including a media appearance, EU policy formation and easing the entry of an e-cigarette company into Britain.

Hours after the MHRA announced it would tighten regulation of e-cigarettes, Ms Arnott sent a rallying e-mail to Mr Mean. “To use Churchill’s well-worn phrase, this isn’t the end, it isn’t even the beginning of the end, but it is, definitely, the end of the beginning!"

More about it on Chis Snowdon's blog -
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-mhra-has-been-collaborating-with-ash.html

 

[AgentAnia]

Good catch, Toby. Backroom shenanigans like this don't surprise me. They disgust me, but nothing these people do surprises me.

I hope the press will follow up with this scandal. These people need to be held accountable...

 

[rolygate]

Everyone knows that the FDA and MHRA are regulatory-captured agencies. The idea that they work for public health is ludicrous at best; they might do so when there are no financial implications for a decision, but otherwise they will always protect pharma from any competition, even when that costs lives. They are part of our health system, which essentially is rotten to the core: it works by permission of pharma and will never under any circumstances take any action that harms pharma income.