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Sunday 17 November 2013

Why I won't sign the save ecigs letter

Here follows the save ecigs letter which people/vapers/smapers/smokers might sign in greater numbers if it wasn't so offensive. The sections I have highlighted in bold, give me the total creeps. It is offensive to smokers and dual users. It is Tobacco Control codswallop, and for that reason I will not sign this letter. I am simply sharing the reason I am not signing this - its my own sensibility that is offended because I am a smoker that vapes, not a vaper that doesn't want to smoke out of guilt, shame, or social manipulation. Vapers have an Achilles heel in that, to Tobacco Control, vaping is seen as normalising smoking. See....Thoughts on Tobacco Control and the enemies of vaping and saving vaping - please ACT!

Otherwise, I think this letter is great! I wish I could sign it! 

Jane Ellison MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health
Department of Health,
Richmond House,
79 Whitehall, London,
London SW1A 2NS

Dear Minister,

Revision of the Tobacco Products Directive

For 1.5 million people in the UK and 12 million people throughout the EU, e-cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes.  They have enabled smokers to leave smoking behind, either on a full or part-time basis.

However, we are genuinely concerned about proposals to amend the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) that could see e-cigarettes only being allowed on the market if they are authorised pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC (the Medicinal Products Directive).

As you will be aware, a cross party majority of MEPs from across the European Parliament, including UK Conservative and Liberal Democrat MEPs, recently voted against the medicinal regulation of e-cigarettes.  Whilst we are obviously delighted by the result, we know that this vote is only one part of a wider process.

As far as we are aware, it is still the policy of the Department for Health to support the medicinal regulation of electronic cigarettes.  We clearly hope that the Department of Health will listen to the wishes of the democratically elected European Parliament and not the wishes of the unelected and unaccountable MHRA.

We hope that the UK Government will join with their colleagues in the European Parliament in rejecting the medicinal regulation of e-cigarettes.  France and others have already made their reservations clear so the UK would not be alone.

Why is this important?

We the undersigned are not just e-cigarette users; we are also the friends and family of some of the UK’s 1.5 million e-cigarette users.  We are the forgotten people in the debate surrounding the revision of the TPD.  

When someone smokes those close to them are also affected.  Consequently, when a smoker switches to e-cigarettes their friends and family benefit too.

As the friends and families of e-cigarette users, we lived with the daily consequences of close contact with our loved ones when they smoked.  For some of us, we even nursed our loved ones and cared for them as they died prematurely of smoking related illnesses.  E-cigarettes have therefore been a revelation, not just for those that use them but also for a far wider group of people.

It is vital that you understand that e-cigarettes are not a medicinal product; users do not see themselves as ill or in treatment. They are adults who have made an informed decision.

Thousands of smokers every year try and fail numerous times to quit using conventional nicotine replacement therapies (NRT).  This is unsurprising as NRTs are proven to have up to a 95 per cent failure rate.  We know first-hand how depressing this is.  However by switching to e-cigarettes, to date, 1.5 million smokers have cut down the amount of tobacco cigarettes they smoke or stopped completely.  This is something that should be celebrated and encouraged, not a cause for concern.

E-cigarettes are though not some form of more effective nicotine replacement therapy they are completely different.  E-cigarettes are an alternative to smoking.  Users must be allowed the freedom to find the correct device and nicotine level that suits their needs, there is no one size fits all e-cigarette, there is no one flavour that suits everyone, there has to be flexibility, there has to be innovation.  These are the very reasons why the e-cigarette is proving so popular.  Medicinal regulation by its very nature will take all this away.  Medical regulation will control and quantify dosage, control and quantify administration, control and quantify the device.  Medicines have to be monitored by medical practitioners, there can be no room for individuality, for finding the right flavour, strength, and device, plus medical regulations cast the shadow of shame and disease on people who are not ill.  It pours more shame on people castigated for a habit.  Ultimately, medicines regulation, as the MHRA has made clear on several occasions, will lead to a ban of all currently available e-cigarettes.  We urge you to look at the difference between what medicines are, and what a recreational device is – look beyond the entrenched view that just because it moves people away from smoking it must be a therapy.

E-cigarettes are simply an alternative to smoking, they deliver clean nicotine – without the tar, carbon monoxide, and volatile hot gases of cigarettes – and as a way of taking nicotine they are pretty near harmless to health.  

E-cigarettes are safe.  By contrast tobacco cigarettes according to your department’s own figures kill 700,000 people each and every year throughout the EU and policy makers are not proposing to ban them.  

We urge you to support the proportionate and robust consumer regulation of e-cigarettes that won the support of MEPs from across the political spectrum on the 8th of October.

The law of unintended consequence in this situation, if you continue to support medicinal regulation, will be to see thousands and thousands of e-cigarette users going back to smoking tobacco cigarettes and consequently dying prematurely.  As a Health Minister you may not like to read this, but it is the truth, and you and your colleagues in the Department of Health need to be aware of this.  If you vote for medicinal regulation in trilogue more people will smoke and more people will die.

Not just for the sake of 1.5 million electronic cigarette users, but for the sake, also, of their friends and family we urge you to do the right thing.  

Yours sincerely

15 comments:

  1. Well said Liz...and I for one won't be signing for the exact same reason. The sooner that vapers realise that they're in the same boat as folk who enjoy tobacco, the better. It's the zealots of tobacco control and their Big Pharma paymasters who are the enemy here. These fanatics just will not stop until those of us who enjoy our nicotine...in whatever form...are wiped from the face of the earth.

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    1. Vapers as ex-smokers have the benefit of having watched the process of smoking persecution as it unfolded in their lives - or at least us older ones have. Thanks for your comment.

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  2. I applaud you Liz. I did sign but only as a show of protest and I fully understand and respect your reasons for refusal.

    As a health statistician | know only to well how scant is the evidence for passive smoking. The problem is that the antz have such influence in the medical sciences that to contradict them is professional suicide. I recall a paper from around 10 years ago published in the British Medical Journal. It concluded that there is no link between passive smoking and smoking related disease. The editor of the BMJ along with the authors came under huge pressure and ridicule by the antz brigade and their supporters to the extent that now no medical professional or scientist would dare release such figures. Bravo Liz, I applaud your stance.

    For me i signed more because my wife hated the smell of stale tobacco on my clothes and is much more happier now that I vape and so has also benefited. And if my wife is happy, so am I. It certainly makes for a quieter life.

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    1. FFS, that has to one of the most pathetic comments re this issue to date. Basically you signed because you wanted a quieter life. What did she do? Stand over you to make sure you did so? Worse, you've also abandoned scientific integrity. Still, hardly surprising - that's par for the course for most health statisticians these days....

      Total respect Liz. Clearly you find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place.

      Prog

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    2. All of us are stuck between a rock and a hard place - yes - exactly. You got it! I don't mind for what reasons people signed the letter - that's all personal. I think MORE people would sign it - I want more people to sign it if it was slightly cropped, that's all.

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    3. Thank you for your comment. There is only funding to prove that smoking is most terrible. And nicotine is terrible. I think vaping is safer, and I also like the cleaness of it. I used to roll my own - American Spirit Natural tobacco which opened my eyes to the way tobacco should really taste and smell - delicious - but I still had tobacco crumbs in all my pockets and on my lap after a rolling session, or lining my handbag! Ha ha.

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  3. I see it differently - I don't like it but even so I see it as being a (necessary) pandering to the known prejudices of the recipients and thus much more likely to get their agreement on the matter of e-cigs.

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    1. Well, I think it rather more shows prejudices in vapers repeating dogma. Pandering doesn't work if we alienate people who could help us with signatures. We need thousands and thousands of signatures without having to arse-creep.

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  4. That first part in bold could have been worded slightly differently. How about sending Jane Ellison your own letter?

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    1. Have done a letter in today's blog - Ii don't know who Jane Ellison is - and besides the bits I criticised I think its a bloody good letter. Thanks for your comment.

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  5. regardless of how its worded the truth remains, 2nd hand smoke is harmfull that is a proven fact....2nd hand vape is not, thats all they were saying

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    1. SHS is not as dangerous as made out. We might find the same exaggerations are trollied out against vapour - in fact we are seeing it already. Knowing how social engineering was choreographed by Tobacco Control, gives us the power of hindsight which smokers never had.

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  6. Jane Ellison has taken over from Anna Soubry, as the UK Minister for Health who will have quite a lot of 'say' in what happens with e.cigs. Soubry wanted e.cigs to be medicinalised and AFAIK, we don't know Jane Ellison's stance yet, maybe someone else can clarify this?
    (Sorry if you already know all that by now, if you do, please ignore this entry!)

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    1. Oh - silly me. In the UK, there's a new "minister" of something every few months. Soubrey is now Defence or something. Can you actually believe that? Ministers change so often, none of them know what they are doing. It's comical really.

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