For those interested, MEP's response to my email....

[Mark_H]

Just thought i would share this.

Dear Mr .............

Thank you for your email setting out your thoughts on a proposal issued
by the European Commission to amend current European law concerning the
manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco and related products.
Richard Ashworth has contacted his colleague Martin Callanan MEP who, as
the Conservative spokesman for the ENVI committee has working on these
proposals and gave us his informed opinion as follows:

"Among the products to be affected by the proposed changes are
electronic inhalers, commonly known as personal vaporizers or
e-cigarettes, which vaporize a liquid solution containing nicotine into
an aerosol mist which is then inhaled to simulate the act of smoking
tobacco. The Commission proposes to limit the amount of nicotine in
solutions sold for use in electronic cigarettes to four milligrams of
nicotine per millilitre, unless the products have been classified as for
medicinal use. This would render the solution too weak to be a viable
source of nicotine for smokers or ex-smokers, or would require
manufacturers to apply for a costly licence to manufacture medicinal
products.

You are not alone in contacting me on this issue - many constituents
feel similarly strongly. I have examined the arguments and I see the
potential e-cigarettes offer as harm-reduction devices to improve human
health. I understand that e-cigarettes offer concentrated nicotine to
addicts without the 4000 toxins and carcinogens found in tobacco smoke,
that use of e-cigarettes removes the risk posed to non-smokers (and
especially to children of smokers) by second hand smoke, that
e-cigarettes appeal to adult smokers seeking to quit but not generally
to children or those not yet addicted to nicotine, that traditional
nicotine replacement therapies proposed by the NHS and the
pharmaceutical industry have had very limited success in helping smokers
quit permanently, and that thousands of British e-cigarette users (and
millions across the EU and the world) are likely to return smoking if
the directive is amended as foreseen and nicotine concentrations are
limited to 4mg/ml. I have no doubt that this will lead to a large
percentage of such users dying of smoking-related diseases that they
might otherwise have avoided. Such arguments have led me to conclude
that the proposed changes to limit permitted concentrations of nicotine
solution sold in the EU are counter-productive and will do more harm
than good.

As a member of the Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public
Health and Food Safety I will put forward these arguments and work to
convince other MEPs of the foolishness of diluting nicotine solution to
the point of uselessness. I would also encourage you to raise
awareness among others in the vapourizing community. If you have not
already done so I would also encourage you to write to your MP and
request that they raise the matter in Westminster. If we bring to the
attention of the public, the political world and the media the strong
arguments in favour of e-cigarettes as a harm reduction device and the
number of lives which can be saved through their use, we have a very
strong chance of winning the argument."

Thank you once again for your email and for sharing your experience.

Kind regards,

Kizzie

Miss Kizzie Fenner
Parliamentary Assistant to Richard Ashworth
Member of the European Parliament for South East England

 

[AnnaLaw]

Just thought i would share this.

Dear Mr .............

Thank you for your email setting out your thoughts on a proposal issued
by the European Commission to amend current European law concerning the
manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco and related products.
Richard Ashworth has contacted his colleague Martin Callanan MEP who, as
the Conservative spokesman for the ENVI committee has working on these
proposals and gave us his informed opinion as follows:

"Among the products to be affected by the proposed changes are
electronic inhalers, commonly known as personal vaporizers or
e-cigarettes, which vaporize a liquid solution containing nicotine into
an aerosol mist which is then inhaled to simulate the act of smoking
tobacco. The Commission proposes to limit the amount of nicotine in
solutions sold for use in electronic cigarettes to four milligrams of
nicotine per millilitre, unless the products have been classified as for
medicinal use. This would render the solution too weak to be a viable
source of nicotine for smokers or ex-smokers, or would require
manufacturers to apply for a costly licence to manufacture medicinal
products.

You are not alone in contacting me on this issue - many constituents
feel similarly strongly. I have examined the arguments and I see the
potential e-cigarettes offer as harm-reduction devices to improve human
health. I understand that e-cigarettes offer concentrated nicotine to
addicts without the 4000 toxins and carcinogens found in tobacco smoke,
that use of e-cigarettes removes the risk posed to non-smokers (and
especially to children of smokers) by second hand smoke, that
e-cigarettes appeal to adult smokers seeking to quit but not generally
to children or those not yet addicted to nicotine, that traditional
nicotine replacement therapies proposed by the NHS and the
pharmaceutical industry have had very limited success in helping smokers
quit permanently, and that thousands of British e-cigarette users (and
millions across the EU and the world) are likely to return smoking if
the directive is amended as foreseen and nicotine concentrations are
limited to 4mg/ml. I have no doubt that this will lead to a large
percentage of such users dying of smoking-related diseases that they
might otherwise have avoided. Such arguments have led me to conclude
that the proposed changes to limit permitted concentrations of nicotine
solution sold in the EU are counter-productive and will do more harm
than good.

As a member of the Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public
Health and Food Safety I will put forward these arguments and work to
convince other MEPs of the foolishness of diluting nicotine solution to
the point of uselessness. I would also encourage you to raise
awareness among others in the vapourizing community. If you have not
already done so I would also encourage you to write to your MP and
request that they raise the matter in Westminster. If we bring to the
attention of the public, the political world and the media the strong
arguments in favour of e-cigarettes as a harm reduction device and the
number of lives which can be saved through their use, we have a very
strong chance of winning the argument."

Thank you once again for your email and for sharing your experience.

Kind regards,

Kizzie

Miss Kizzie Fenner
Parliamentary Assistant to Richard Ashworth
Member of the European Parliament for South East England

That's the Conservative form letter.
I wish that our Conservatives hadn't broken away from the big EU grouping they used to be a member of and joined a ner-fascist small EU party because they're anti-EU.

 

[Vapourmate]

Thanks for posting this

 

[Caerulea]

To be fair - I just had the unenviable task of sifting through all the responses over on UKV. There is an AWFUL lot of duplications and it is seriously frustrating. One user even had a response to the letter he sent about the heart attacks he had suffered and the subsequent improvement in his health, thanks to e-cigs, responded to with a letter all about plain packaging on fag packets. Deeply insulting imho.

The above letter (although continuously cut and pasted to users all over the country) is actually one of the better ones.

Take hope where we can find it

 

[Doodlebug]

Seems to me, Caerulea, that you need to do to them what they do to us, and disregard all the duplications!

Sterling work, btw! Hats off to you and KMS for FINALLY pulling something together. Any chance of either or both of you running for executive positions in ECCA? Lord knows, it needs you!

Cheers,

Katherine