Leaked EU Memo Shows Blatant Disregard for Peoples’ Health and Rights

The EU are at it again, even after we stopped their ridiculous medical classification idea they seem to be gearing up to try again.

This time it isn’t anything to do with medicine though, it’s essentially an outright ban.
A confidential memo being passed around behind closed doors in Brussels has been leaked, and is available to read at the Nicotine Science and Policy website which you can see by clicking this sentence.

Before we start panicking, these are NOT outright proposals as yet, they are proposed points of debate. Even so we can’t just sit back on our heels and let them carry this forward.

The crux of it are these main points:

Only single use cartomisers will be available. No tanks. Nothing refillable. That means NO E-LIQUID.

A nicotine density of NO MORE than 20mg per ml in the base. There is no justification for this at all.

Each cart will be able to have NO MORE than 10mg of nicotine. Nowhere near enough for basically any vaper.

Only flavours that are already approved for NRT will be available. UNLESS those flavours appeal to children or non-smokers. Who all presumably find the same things appealing since they’re all the same. So, no menthol.

Advertising in print, on the radio, on the internet or in any medium that can be seen on TV (which includes signs at football matches and the like) will be BANNED.

Those aren’t even the worst parts:

The only devices available will be ones that ‘deliver nicotine doses consistently and uniformly’, an absolutely ridiculous regulation that according to Dr. Farsalinos, an expert in this field, is almost impossible to comply with. NOTHING delivers nicotine in this way. NRT doesn’t. Tobacco cigarettes don’t.

They will demand 100% purity that, while everyone strives for it, is impossible to attain. Even NRT products contain trace tobacco nitrosamines. It’s an unreasonable regulation that is essentially just a ban, since nobody can comply.

They then go on to harp on their favourite ‘issue’; that e-cigs are marketed to children and non-smokers.
NO. THEY. AREN’T. It’s gone beyond misinformation to outright lying at this point.

The entire document is apparently based on ignorance of e-cigs. It’s a move that if taken will severely damage public health in the European Union. They are talking about attempting to ban what, for a massive amount of people, is the only alternative to tobacco smoking they have. Especially as NRT does not work according to lots of studies.

But what can we do?

We can do everything in our power to educate MPs and MEPs. Just like last time.
Send letters, send emails, make phonecalls, make appointments to see your MP. Explain to them what e-cigs mean to you and the people you know. Take your devices with you and show them how they work. Tell them you will not stand for an outright ban.

This can’t be allowed to go any further than it already has. While I don’t go in for conspiracy theories it’s difficult to stop imagining the hands of Big Pharma and Big Tobacco guiding this discussion forward in their own interests.

We need every vaper in the country, every vaper in the EU, every vaper in the world to make their voices heard. If this is allowed to run its course there’s no telling where they’ll stop; it may not end with the EU.

Talk to your MP.
Talk to your MEP.
Make them see sense.

They can’t do this without consulting us first. They can’t ban anything without at least a referendum and hopefully it never comes to that.

They can’t slide this effective ban through in secret like they’ve apparently tried to do. My thanks go out to whomever leaked this document.

They’re not going to be allowed to make these decisions because of jumped-up ignorance and the interference of companies with lots of money.

We need to make the biggest noise we’ve ever made as a culture and get this stopped.

They’re not taking our e-cigs.

Keep vaping.

James D. Bovington,
Vaper.
Team TABlites Member.

Sources:
Clive Bates’ ‘The Counterfactual’
Nicotine Science and Policy website (Opens a .pdf file)
VapourTrailsTV ‘A Plea to Vapers Everywhere’ (Opens a Youtube video)