In A Nutshell, where we are today, (Poss New Laws Vaping)

[jeffc]

Hi Mods. I hope I have not broken any rules but I have copied this post from UKV forum.

It sums up the situation we vapers find our selves.


Once upon a time a thing called an e-cig got invented and started to gain a market circa 2007/8ish. No-one was bothered because it was only used by a bunch of cranks who were looking for a substitute fag and of course there could be no such thing.
Fast forward to December 2012 and the ranks of cranks had swollen to millions in the U.S, E.U and U.K and, even worse, a lot of them had stopped buying tobacco because, by a really serendipitous happenstance, the ecig not only satisfied the users - they actually grew to prefer it!! What was really surprising though was that the health of ecig users appeared to improve. Lungs cleared up, asthma sufferers threw away their Salmeterol - heart conditions improved, joggers who had been sedentary for years put on their running shoes again, the list went on and on.
This was wonderful news.
Alas, not for the tobacco companies who were losing a big slice of their market; not for the big pharmaceutical companies either - these "vapers" were a huge threat to them. Not only were they no longer in need of the expensive drugs for C.O.P.D and related conditions, of which, according to their figures, one in two smokers die - but it was entirely possible that they would avoid lung cancer, and that is seriously expensive treatment.
As if that were not enough to contend with there was the loss of all the billions paid out world-wide for Nicotine Replacement Therapies which, it is said, are ineffective 95% of the time - unlike the e-cig which satisfies the user 57% of the time, a conservative figure.
Most smokers desperate to quit will pay anything for a "cure" - if they are fortunate enough to reside in the U.K the Government will fund this indefinitely, at the tax-payers expense; other countries are not so generous.
And so we come to Government - I can only cite the U.K of course.
Now, for any cynics out there, they only want what's best for us - don't they?
Smoking-related disease is estimated to cost the NHS £1.3 billion per annum and that's a serious amount of money; on the other hand they screw smokers for £9 billion per annum. Now, mathematics was never my strong suit, but one has to wonder whether the fact that one smoker subsidises treatment for himself and six or seven other (possibly non-smoking but still sick) citizens might not weigh just the teensiest bit with them when they consider their budget.
What a dilemma for them all you might think, but help was at hand; in December 2012 they found that the Tobacco Products Directive or TPD was due for resurrection so, taking advantage of Christmas when everyone would be full of good cheer, they slipped in a little clause making E- cigarettes a "tobacco product" - how clever was that? Well, not very, actually. as we shall see.
E-cigarette users all over Europe picked up on this immediately and proceeded to stand up for their rights; united as never before the good citizens of the E.U have continued to monitor every move made by Brussels - which is why, when confronted by this, certain MEPs declared that we were not a grass roots movement - we were Astro-turf; in other words fronts or "shills" for interested parties ie Big Tobacco !!
You couldn't make it up! Actually they did. In their arrogance and ignorance, and with their own questionable ethics in mind, they regard the ordinary citizen as an uneducated species with insufficient skills to compose any of the thousands of letters they have received, and certainly lacking the ability to have more understanding of the subject than they themselves can boast.
A certain junior minister and her side-kick were given charge of this by HM Government. She received pleas, impassioned letters, information by the truck-load from the vaping community, who number 1.3 million in U.K and climbing, so watch those marginals in 2015; evidence from highly respected researchers such as Dr Farsalinos of the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre and Prof. Michael Siegel of Boston, and Clive Bates an ex director of ASH stating that the e-cigarette is, by orders of magnitude safer than tobacco cigarettes. How much of this information was HM Government privy to you may ask - well, none. Contrary to all rules and protocols no informed consultation took place between this woman and the government - because, according to her, there was insufficient time - and she knew best anyway didn't she?
We have to ask ourselves why this lady displayed such unseemly haste in voting against the very existence of the electronic cigarette so that it could be done and dusted under the Irish Presidency of the E.U
It could well have been carried over to the Lithuanian Presidency - no harm would have come of it. Was there more riding on this than is apparent to the naked eye?
Thanks to this mishandling we are now in a situation where a common consumable which has the potential to prevent untold suffering and millions of unnecessary deaths is to be handed over to the Pharmaceutical Companies who, in their own interests, will emasculate it to the point where it is even less effective than their own failed NRTs thus driving its users back to the cigarettes which will still be
freely available. What a very neat solution.
Go pleading to your doctor for the ineffective dose of nicotine, which will send you scuttling off to buy your 20 Bensons , the price of which will go mainly to the Government but leave more than enough to keep the Tobacco boys happy, your illnesses will return with a vengeance and you complete the circle by going back on those meds (or dying prematurely) The last is yet another plus for HMG - too many coffin-dodgers.
WELL NOT IF WE CAN HELP IT!!!!!

All credit for this write up is the post of "Dragonmum" UKV Forum member.

[Karma]

As far as I'm aware jeffc no rules have been broken.

I hope you don't mind though that I've edited your post into sections to make it easier to read

[jeffc]

Karma. Thank you, we all need to keep up to date from all avenues of news and write ups.

We must all do our bit to correct these outrageous would be new laws.


jeffc

[davess]

Excellent post.