I think we could use some separation perhaps?

[markm]

No tobacco will remain on sale, they will be sold in anonymous packets
With larger health warnings and from behind screens, but that's about
It for the restrictions, anyone smell a rat!

[4madcats]

Aug 14, 2013 20:54:11 GMT dreamylittledream said:

The residual argument that this isn't a medical product but an alternative way of consuming an already legal drug is of course not addressed by this in the slightest

Not been addressed by MHRA you mean? MHRA has taken the view that ecig products are smoking cessation aids, & as such to be effective they need to come in a measurable regulated dose, therefore the on that basis the only way this can be achieved to give nicotine a medical license, & while MHRA are ignoring the fact that no ecig vendor big or small has marketed them in this way, it is the backbone argument of everyone from individuals to larger organisations who are fighting the good fight, all you need to do is check out the ECITA blogs, Clive Bates or the SWOF campaign.

As for tobacco being excluded it has "Grandfather rights" so because it was on the market in the shape & form it's currently in, not sure if it was 7yrs before these current TPD amendments it gets left alone.

The thing we need separation from is that MHRA and the TPD Linda McAvan coven cannot & will not recognise that just because we wish to "quit smoking" and remove ourselves from harms way in the form of the 69/70 cancerous products in tobacco, we do not, nor do we have to quit nicotine. Nicotine is still the big bad demon in their eyes, & despite all the evidence to the contrary they are stubbornly refusing to listen.

As to the China issue, exactly where do you think all ego type batteries are manufactured, find me one EU/UK manufacturer, not distributors or sellers but manufacturers of an ego battery. The only ecig stuff not manufactured in China are the high exclusive Mods.

[giles]

It isn't chinese manufacture that is the issue, it is chinese retailers. If you buy a chinese-made product from a UK company they can regulate it. If you buy a product from china they can't (irrespective of who made it).

I doubt whether we can avoid all regulation. I'm not even convinced that we should. Any regulation will have to do something about goods imported from abroad.

[fiddles]

Call me stupid if you like but i really think most of you are missing the point !
E-cigs / Mods whatever you want to call them ....WORK. The governments don't want us to quit, there is 12 billion a year in revenue at stack.

[4madcats]

Aug 14, 2013 22:24:37 GMT giles said:

It isn't chinese manufacture that is the issue, it is chinese retailers. If you buy a chinese-made product from a UK company they can regulate it. If you buy a product from china they can't (irrespective of who made it).

I doubt whether we can avoid all regulation. I'm not even convinced that we should. Any regulation will have to do something about goods imported from abroad.

Which is where the wholesalers licenses come in, so if you want to import to then sell in this country your still going to need a license.

[4madcats]

Aug 14, 2013 22:33:07 GMT fiddles said:

Call me stupid if you like but i really think most of you are missing the point !
E-cigs / Mods whatever you want to call them ....WORK. The governments don't want us to quit, there is 12 billion a year in revenue at stack.

None of us are missing the point, now all you have to do is prove that's the reason behind all this & we can all vape in peace & quiet . . . . or can we cos this has now become what seems to be a personal crusade to some in the EU who believe we'er all to stupid to look after ourselves and they've come to far to back down or except reasonable rationale arguments & hard evidence, their ego's pardon the pun, will not let them voluntarily back down.

[fiddles]

Aug 14, 2013 22:48:02 GMT 4madcats said:

Aug 14, 2013 22:33:07 GMT fiddles said:

Call me stupid if you like but i really think most of you are missing the point !
E-cigs / Mods whatever you want to call them ....WORK. The governments don't want us to quit, there is 12 billion a year in revenue at stack.

None of us are missing the point, now all you have to do is prove that's the reason behind all this & we can all vape in peace & quiet . . . . or can we cos this has now become what seems to be a personal crusade to some in the EU who believe we'er all to stupid to look after ourselves and they've come to far to back down or except reasonable rationale arguments & hard evidence, their ego's pardon the pun, will not let them voluntarily back down.

Well yeah you are
talk of mods , Chinese imports etc

The low down is they don't want us to quit smoking, so normal logic doesn't work

[4madcats]

Aug 14, 2013 18:11:42 GMT Ancient Hermit said:

Hi Folks,

I saw a clip of some doctor on a breakfast show, it was Phil Schofield interviewing Linda Robson I think, and the doctor agreed with the idea of e-cigs, but expressed some concern over some of the products coming from China, and the quality being a bit suspect.

That is probably the perception a lot of folk could have if they see it mentioned often enough, and it seems to me maybe we should seek to distance Vaping from the average e-cig alike otherwise in legislating those, we get vaping thrown into the same category.

It may be that if we are a moving target in that way then we should or at least could be a bit harder to hit.

One or two MEPs are making encouraging noises about it all, and I wonder if that could be helpful in their attempts to lever the thing apart, in that there is an issue of what exactly people are trying to legislate for.

I could see the case for legislating the medicinal big tobacco e-gigs into a safer zone, but as long as that is not the same as vaping then we may come out of this better than we otherwise could.

I mean, we don't all have lights on the end of our devices, and then there are other appearance issues that might just cloud the issue in our favour too.
The distancing could make us less obvious as a target for the anti e-cig brigade is all I am thinking. Not a truly bad thing I'd guess? ???

Nope I was addressing the original post ^^^^^ , & normal logic has never worked when it comes to the TPD all the way back to 2001, but the you seem to be missing the point that whatever happens will be decided in the EU not the UK & the EU don't give a flying feck about what individual country is losing what in tax, not their concern or remit.

[Ancient Hermit]

OK, so we have 24 months as I see it.

It feels possible to me that in 24 months we could drop one mg per month on average, and be able to be nic free before it hits.

Many of us need more months than that? We could stock pile a little to see us through that I would guess.

However this is not to say that we need to stop vaping. I can't see me not vaping something for the flavour alone now. If it's still on sale then I'll be buying pg, vg and flavours.

What it could mean is that we would not need nic, and we might not need nic replacement either, this leaves big tobacco and big pharma stuffed, and I don't think they would like the Govt to let that happen.

I do take it that you can see how they would have a major problem with stopping it all at that point. All we need to do is commit to trying to do that. We'd be committing to becoming no longer being addicted to something they can control.

I think they might be worried enough to take another line at this point. A 12 Billion gap ahead IS a fairly large reason for them to want to no longer do it like they seem to intend.

We would need to get as many on board as it takes for them to become worried enough to act.

Does this not make some sense? ???

[4madcats]

Ancient Hermit it makes perfect sense & it's what a lot of peeps have been doing for the past 8mths, but I doubt if the TPD goes through there will be that much loss in revenue if big T are one of the players cos one of two things will happen, they'll either totally stifle ecig development making them all but useless, about as much good as current NRT's so the current increase of future vapers will stop & people will return to ciggies & tobacco, or the government will find a way to apply tax to ecigs.


Italy just threatened it, wanted to put the same levee of tax on ecigs that was on tobacco about 58% I think, they've backed down for the moment but there's no saying they won't revisit it if they do start to loss to much.

[Ancient Hermit]

If we can get more on board, then their revenues start to fall further and faster. If those start to lower their nic consumption then they hit diminishing return prospect.

If when they do allow the law to run live in this country (NOT a foregone conclusion either, see Sir Frederick Jacobs' Opinion elsewhere), at that point we ALL request for NRT patches or whatever for free for 12 weeks, as we can do, to stop us going back to cigs - then, THEN we would see them in a really bad case of U-Turn as they work out the pricing on all that.

What we need to do right now is make our intentions of doing all this crystal clear and publicly right now, then they got longer to worry about it! LOL

I reckon they would have to make some obvious moves that would expose their true motives at that point (like stopping free NRT at least, it's that or pay up of course, and they won't want to do that), and It's my guess we got them fully and demonstrably exposed at that point!

We just need critical mass for this to have a chance. If each one of us got one other on board we'd be self doubling in numbers, it's astonishing how that lark racks up and how quickly.

If anyone sees any real gotchas, then let's hear them, we could do a lot worse than debug such a scheme, for example we could do nothing at all. That's not my idea of showing you intend to keep a hold of something of value to you!

[giles]

I'm a nicotine addict, and I don't see myself cutting down to 2% nic.

The money government gets from tobacco tax really isn't important. They realised that battle was lost years ago, and didn't care because they make the money back from lower sickness rates (the lost hours of work mattering a lot more than the NHS cost).

The real cost of people giving up smoking is that they will live longer, and so cost more in pensions, but not even our politicians are cynical enough to want us to die as soon as possible after we retire (well, most of our politicians).

What is motivating the EU, and much of our medical establishment, is the pharma companies, which spend huge amounts on lobbying. They have a lot to lose if use of ecigs continues to grow, because their NRT products will be wiped out. The medical establishment is used to listening to the pharma companies, and to a large extent trusting them, because that is where nearly all of their information about drugs comes from.

If it meant that I'd be able to continue to feed my habit, then personally I'd be happy to pay a bit of tax on ecigs, as long as they remain cheaper than cigarettes (even for users of pre-filled cartos). And I'd be happy with legislation which used alcohol legislation as a model. No selling to kids, restricted advertising, rules about quality control and labels and so on. Which implies licensing the retailers of juice, and legislating against buying it direct from abroad. I doubt if it is feasible to restrict buying of equipment.

I think we stand a better chance of continuing to get usable ecigs if we accept this level of control than if we try to get them to leave it as unregulated as it is at present.

[markm]

Take a look at the SWOF campaign, take a look at Ecigssavelives
Stop trying to reinvent the wheel - the EU needs education as they are voting without understanding the issues.

There are several out of date suggestions on this thread by people who seem to want to step back
in time and dilute the focus of what needs to be done. If you follow their suggestions there will be
no ecigs, yes current users can probably work round that, but there will be no new users. that will
mean millions of people per year who could be extending their lives and improving their health
every year that will remain trapped.

Don't sit back, and let it happen, don't wait for them to close the door on this, write to your MP/MEP
now and tell them what it means to you. Politicians always listen to the loudest voice, at the moment
that's the one whispering in their ears, we need to get louder folks.

[raid2506]

One thing people need to understand is this fight is 100% about tax revenue.

If the argument was actually about our health then all tobacco products would be banned as they are deadly.

Unfortunately the income from tax on tobacco goes to a government department which has bigger guns.

So the MHRA are swayed to apply one set of rules to products which return little or no tax revenue and another set to the money maker, tobacco.

How can the argument that e cigs should be banned because they are not proven to be safe not equally be applied to all tobacco products?

[dnglos]

Aug 15, 2013 6:20:05 GMT markm said:

Don't sit back, and let it happen, don't wait for them to close the door on this, write to your MP/MEP
now and tell them what it means to you. Politicians always listen to the loudest voice, at the moment
that's the one whispering in their ears, we need to get louder folks.

I'm wondering if we should go beyond contacting elected MPs. There's a general election coming up next year, so maybe we should be reminding all the candidates (especially Labour) that e-cig users have votes, as do their friends and families.