MHRA regulation of electronic cigarettes announced

[steffijade]

Tofu! Ive always been under the impression you prefer a bit of Meat Steffi

Trust you.

 

[Fleabag]

What needs to be done to preserve ingredients for prolonged periods? - assuming the powers that be get their way - I want to stock up further, but I don't want the ingredients to degrade.
I'd also be interested to know which ingredients and equipment are likely to be regulated - obviously, they can't apply restrictions to VG - I assume neither would they for PG. The flavours themselves I would assume would be hard to regulate. Would just the nic base be restricted/inflated because of the regulations? If so, how does one store this?
Again, the equipment doesn't pose any (supposed) risk in itself, so I assume the hardware can continue to be bought without restrictions/inflated prices (as mentioned above, all kinds of cannabis smoking/preparing equipment can be legally sold in the UK)

 

[VaperCaper]

They could quite easily apply similar legislation to that of cosmetics. Every product must be fully risk assessed by a qualified chemist, but this can be done in an affordable way for small businesses. Individual risk assessments are available for £100-£200, which covers the manufacturer to make one specific product with fixed ingredients, but a full risk assessment can be purchased for around £500-£600, which allows for a range of base products with all possible additional ingredients. This enables the manufacturer to produce shampoos, creams, lotions with a range of scent additions under one affordable risk assessment. The process would work just the same with juice - risk assessments that specify a range of strength liquids and all possible flavours you might want to add. When you produce, you are guaranteeing that you are adhering to the recipes covered by your risk assessment, and you can be prosecuted for trading outside those restrictions or without the assessment.
All small traders would be able to afford a few hundred quid to risk assess their recipes.

Oh, and large scale cosmetic companies can't operate under this legislation, they have to have different risk assessments for massive production of single recipes that cost BIG money

I'd happily sign up to something like this. I am just about to start selling my own juices (just as soon as I get the mixes right) and I will be getting my e-liquids GC-MS tested i) for my own piece of mind and ii) cos it's just good business sense to do so when it costs as little as £250 per test via ECITA.

I will more than happily comply with any regulations that are along the lines of the ECITA ISE and are affordable for my business. I'd guess 90%+ of all of us vendors here would say the same.

 

[Fleabag]

Exactly. I have toyed with the idea of trading in juice myself - and in my experience, most of the traders seem to be committed vapers themselves. I've spent a while tweaking the PG/VG ratios to suit my own taste (I find most pre-mixed have too much PG for my preference). I think most vendors would be happy enough paying for a professional risk assessment to cover them for all their ingredients, including their sources. A few hundred quid can be easily absorbed into the smallest of businesses, and once it's purchased, it doesn't have to be redone unless ingredients change (and in cosmetics, assessments can be updated for a small additional fee).
Large companies will have no interest in creating the cocktails the small companies (or home mixers) do, as minority interest blends will be discontinued in favour of a few high revenue flavours.
Part of the enjoyment, and what helps maintain my interest, is being able to blend an almost unlimited range of flavours from the 20 flavour concentrates I have.

I suppose all this was inevitable - vaping as it's been was just too good to be true!

 

[Numpty]

@Numpty, step back and look what you have just written. Sorry, but the responsibility also has to lie with the buyer as well as the vendor. If 'dodgy dave' is selling juice at £1 per bottle, what are you going to expect?? You always buy juice off of the tried & tested vendors. In all forms of any industry, you will get your chancers. Now the likes of ECITA and ECCA can give you the tools to ensure where possible the vendors are safe and accredited, but its the choice of the customer as to wether he buys it or not.

I put my trust in several juice vendors, and I certainly class them way above learning their mixing skills and knowledge off the internet or by ear, I find this quite derogatory and rather insulting if I am honest.

The point I think is the average buyer isn't qualified to decide which strange chemical component is safe to inhale and which isn't and if qualified people such as chemist say these are not a good idea and these are ok and the only additives we have found to be safe then that's a very much better than Joe public taking a punt.
The whole e-juice situation needs clarification on both sides, information for the public to make informed choices and vendors and mixers to have a safe ingredients list to work from, so far this appears to have evolve through trial and error and has not been properly quantified and made available as a centralised source of information.

You are right it is a buyers choice, but a real choice should be informed and based on more than something a friend said or it tastes good or as far as I know they have not made anyone sick yet. whether something is good or not needs some quantifiable means of measure so batch testing and some kind of check would provide that in a way we all understand using a check or measuring system that has been qualified, I have a goat for sale, how many chickens should you give me ??

Who here has seen exactly where the juice they are injesting is made ?
Any idea on procedures? Hygiene standards ? Method of measuring and accuracy ? The vendors source of nicotine or ingredient ?
Would it be a bad thing to have all this as a known rather than 'Bob' says it's great and it tastes nice?

You are most welcome to go forward based purely on trust but I would feel better if what I vape had been quantified as far as content and quality of preparation, no more than you might expect from your beer or slice of cheese, just a bit more than blind faith and I think 'Brian the juice wizard' is a nice guy.

You seem to feel insulted by my impression on learning the art of juice mixing, I'd be extremely grateful if you could help be change this impression and inform me as the where I can go and learn this art of mixing food flavourings with pharmaceutical glycerins and a potential poison, I've not seen anything I can attend where I could be instructed by someone with suitable qualifications on distributing a known poison safely and consistantly, this leads me to believe it must be trial and error on the back of rumour.

Again I will say, I think it should be covered by food regulations, the same regulations as the beer and cheese I mentioned earlier, if that beer is not sold in the quantity and of the alcohol strength described it's a weights and measures problem, there you have it, a standard we understand, both buyer and vendor and someone to be accountable to should it not be so...

I just want to know more about to contents of what I'm buying and that it wasn't made in a bucket on someone's balcony..
Guess that makes me a bit crazy, what next bootleg Russian Vodka anyone ???

 

[Numpty]

I may well be naive but I think I'm probably more cynical than naive.

I used to be quite paranoid about what I was inhaling when I first started vaping... seems to be a bit of a pattern... make the change to vaping and became concerned with ingredients and such.

That largely disappeared when I started mixing my own liquids.. I get my ingredients from reliable sources and I control what goes into my liquids so it's not a worry for me.

The clear guidelines are already in place... if someone chooses not to comply then that's their moral/ethical choice.

I think it's incredibly naive of you to think just because that heavy hand regulations were introduced that those self same people with dodgy ethics/morals would suddenly comply. The existing regulations are adequate and whenever you buy anything that you haven't made yourself you're taking a chance. If you're not confident in the safety of a product then don't buy it.

Although I have yet to hear of anyone getting seriously harmed through correct use of vaping equipment, I suppose there's always the odd chance but you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Switching to vaping won't make anyone immortal and it's silly to presume that ANYTHING you ingest is 100% safe.... even my tofu

If there is any issue, it's with the enforcement of the current regulations.. not with the actual regulations themselves. The only thing that needs adding imho is a ban on sales to under 18's... which reliable vendors already do.

The general thrust of these proposed regulations is to squeeze out smaller interests and leave the market open for exploitation by interests with the cash to actually pay for medical licensing... or am I being naive?

A few points to clarify here....
Home mixing isn't such an issue, if you are sure everything the labels on the bottles says is true then you have the advantage of knowing your final product was mixed in a hygienic fashion with a certain level of accuracy, much less of a worry I'd imagine, better to have things under your own control when possible.

Clear guidlines are in place, I think more should be done to be sure people have adhered to them and some kind of qualification that is indeed the case, I think we should have what we get from the food industry which it is usually date stamped and carrys a contents breakdown.

I am not suggesting the heavy hand you accuse, I absolutely think the medicine regulations is lunacy, I think something more than reliance on a strangers moral code is needed and the food industry has everything we need and is very well understood.

I also agree that so far I have heard nothing of someone being injured or being made ill by vaping, I have heard of quite a few with a VG sensitivity and I am one of them, which is a major part of my point, I think it's crazy the number of vendors do not state the PG / VG ratios of their juice, and the re-bottling resellers of imported juices know and state even less, that ratio is important to me and several others on this forum, this forum represents a tiny proportion of the vaping community so some simple maths may show that simple piece of missing information is vital, if they can not be bothered or deem it important enough what else are they being laxidasical about ?

No one has been made seriously ill by vaping to our knowledge, that's true and a damn good start but the same was true when tobacco and premade cigarettes where commercialised, it was marketed as 'beneficial' much like vaping but we learned that's not the case many years and many lives later, it would seem prudent to try and minimise the risks, stick within the guidlines and actually have a few checks made along the way let's not take the chance something as potentially life saving as e-cigs get put off track through ignorance, contaminants and uninformed decisions by unqualified mixers, we will all benefit long term.

 

[whipitup]

This is a "good" read:

http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-mhra-kills-golden-goose.html

And this is a very good watch, a long way through, the bit about juice control from E-cig Wizard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9_h6mmnptM&feature=youtu.be

David Dorn is a bloody star.

 

[steffijade]

A few points to clarify here....
Home mixing isn't such an issue, if you are sure everything the labels on the bottles says is true then you have the advantage of knowing your final product was mixed in a hygienic fashion with a certain level of accuracy, much less of a worry I'd imagine, better to have things under your own control when possible.

Clear guidlines are in place, I think more should be done to be sure people have adhered to them and some kind of qualification that is indeed the case, I think we should have what we get from the food industry which it is usually date stamped and carrys a contents breakdown.

I am not suggesting the heavy hand you accuse, I absolutely think the medicine regulations is lunacy, I think something more than reliance on a strangers moral code is needed and the food industry has everything we need and is very well understood.

I also agree that so far I have heard nothing of someone being injured or being made ill by vaping, I have heard of quite a few with a VG sensitivity and I am one of them, which is a major part of my point, I think it's crazy the number of vendors do not state the PG / VG ratios of their juice, and the re-bottling resellers of imported juices know and state even less, that ratio is important to me and several others on this forum, this forum represents a tiny proportion of the vaping community so some simple maths may show that simple piece of missing information is vital, if they can not be bothered or deem it important enough what else are they being laxidasical about ?

No one has been made seriously ill by vaping to our knowledge, that's true and a damn good start but the same was true when tobacco and premade cigarettes where commercialised, it was marketed as 'beneficial' much like vaping but we learned that's not the case many years and many lives later, it would seem prudent to try and minimise the risks, stick within the guidlines and actually have a few checks made along the way let's not take the chance something as potentially life saving as e-cigs get put off track through ignorance, contaminants and uninformed decisions by unqualified mixers, we will all benefit long term.

Ok luv.. I take your point about VG sensitivity.. good point well presented.

That said, if you're that worried about the possible future effects then why are you even vaping? Why not just smoke tobacco cigarettes where you are fully aware of the consequences? Probably because you already feel the benefits of vaping and feel better in yourself. If you're not prepared to take the 'risk' of vaping then there's plenty of 'safe' NRT products out there that you can try... best of British with that. Not a viable option either? Then you're in the same boat as the rest of us.

NOBODY is perfect... everyone makes mistakes from time to time and even the safest of manufacturing processes are not immune from human error. You take a risk everytime you take a drag off an e-cig. If it's not dodgy juice then it might be a dodgy atty that shorts out... or an electronics failure in the mod... or the battery might decide to go bang. Those are just the necessary risks involved because they are the necessary components needed to vape. I repeat vaping will not make anyone immortal and I'll add that despite what anyone might think, it's not a risk free alternative.

Back when I used to frequent UKV there was a particular member there who was even more bitter, twisted and cynical than me (hard to believe I know, but true). He quite often came out with things that I found antognising but there is one thing he wrote that was absolutely spot on and it's stuck with me.

He wrote that we (vapers) are all just guinea pigs.

Vaping is such a new and novel phenomenon that no one... however much of an expert they claim to be, can guarantee that there won't be any long term detrimental effects to vaping. By the same token, no one can guarantee that there will be any long term detrimental effects.

For myself, I've done my own personal risk assessment and decided that vaping is a safer option than smoking 50 fags a day. I'd advise you to do your own risk assessment and if you think the cons outweigh the pros then just stop vaping. No one forces you (or anyone else) to buy products from one particular vendor. If all the proposals from the MHRA go through, I feel there is a danger that the vaping world will end up dominated by just a couple of huge interests and then we would all be forced to buy from particular vendors (unless we wanted to non compliant).

Don't fall into the trap of believing that you take no responsibility for your decisions... we're all responsible for our own purchasing choices and we should all be willing to face the consequences of those decisions. If we want to take a chance on a cheap bottle of juice then that's our decision and our lookout. That cheap bottle of juice might turn out to be cack, but it might also be the best thing you've ever tasted. Either way, we need to take some responsibility ourselves. If we're unsure of ingredients then what's wrong with asking before buying? If we're still not sure about the safety of something after asking questions then we should just move along and find another supplier who we think is more worthy of trust.

It's not difficult... any dodgy dealers will soon be found out and disappear. The trustworthy and reliable ones will thrive, as has already happened.

New vapers might be unsure as to who the trustworthy suppliers are, but there's a simple solution to that too. Instead of the anti smoking lobby constantly warning about possible risks and making all of the vaping industry seem slightly untrustworthy to the layman, they should be getting behind the suppliers who have already proven themselves and promoting them to would be vapers instead of trying to sow seeds of doubt.

One final point. Everyone has to start somewhere and especially in an industry with such a short history, it's the pioneers that lead the way. We wouldn't have mass produced VV/VW devices, carto tanks, rebuildable atties and all the wonderfully flavourful juices we have without the 'men in sheds' modders and 'kitchen table' mixers. It's the consumers, the actual vapers themselves, who have driven development and created demand for mass marketed products. Without them we'd all still be vaping on the same simple setups that were around in the mid noughties. You might want to bear that in mind before you sign away your rights for the illusion of safety.

 

[Rexer]

Already tried that a few times and it didn't work for me.

I'm at a level that works for me now and I wouldn't want to go much lower.

Wouldn't want to? Bearing in mind I was a 30 a day smoker and I am currently very happy with my switch to vaping I do not intend to keep this up, I saw it as a healthier way of getting used to the idea of quitting nicotine.

You know what they say, if at first you don't succeed hit it with a bigger hammer, well I reckon I will be using his logic very soon

 

[KulrMeStoopid]

Ta luv... tried to log into my ecca account a few times but it wouldn't let me. Maybe I was persona non grata to the bigwigs? (shrug)

Might try re-registering.

Yeah the ecca forum will need to reregistet its all new...