Dear Matt
Thank you for your email outlining your concerns with the EU draft
Directive on tobacco and smoking.
UKIP, being strongly libertarian, agrees with your personal rights to
take tobacco and the like for whatever personal pleasure you take from
it. We believe that the EU should have no jurisdiction over us (either
as persons or as the United Kingdom) in these matters, and that we are
entirely able to take these decisions for ourselves as responsible
individuals and as an independent nation. We will certainly oppose this
legislation at all levels, from votes in committee, speeches as
opportunity arises, meetings with industry lobbyists (BAT are in contact
with us), and final votes in the Strasbourg parliament.
In a more rear-guard manner, it may also be possible for UKIP to put
down amendments to the legislation to water it down in progress, or
loosen the limits for such things as milligrams allowed for OTC sales.
Unfortunately, our chances of success in these votes and amendments are
small as the three old parties all vote against us and in line with the
EU band-wagon. The EU is entirely against personal liberty and freedom,
and certainly wishes you to be forced to be healthy in the way it
decides for you, which is for your own good, in their view. Of course,
eventually the EU will see fit to ban all tobacco, let alone other
nicotine products, so then only the black market will exist, much as
things went in the USSR and Red China.
As a further fall-back position it may be useful to prepare yourself for
the worst with research into non-EU controlled sources of nicotine fluid
and the like which may spring up in a free market response to the EU Big
Brother-Big Nanny State approach to these things, or even be available
now. The UK alone does an excellent job of regulating such things, and
the EU intrusion is as unnecessary as it is unwelcome.
Please support UKIP by voting thoughtfully in all available situations,
we are the only party fighting the EU on these and all other aspects of
being ruled by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. As you did not elect
them you cannot vote them out, withdrawal is the only way.
Yours sincerely
Benjamin Wrench
Office of Nigel Farage, Brussels
