A piece I was asked to contribute to Vape News Monthly, I hope no one is offended or noses are put out of joint as it was intended as a balanced article. All sources are quoted in the actual piece and images sourced. 
Mean Spirits
The political state of play of vaping in the United Kingdom
Eighty thousand people will die this year in the United Kingdom; each and every one of those eighty thousand will succumb to an avoidable smoking-related illness. The loss of life on this scale would prompt countries into a global state of action were it to happen in some far-flung corner of the world. It is of no surprise that the rise of e-cigarettes within the UK is causing debate, and politicians love to get involved in an argument. Vapers would believe the case for accepting their free lifestyle choice ought to be clear-cut but the waters are being muddied as businesses, organisations and a particular quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) get involved.
At the forefront of policy making in the UK lies the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MRHA) quango, an unelected collection of “experts” appointed by the governing political party. The MHRA is responsible for regulating all medicines and medical devices in the UK by ensuring they work and are acceptably safe. At the beginning of July 2013 the MRHA announced that electronic cigarettes were to be licensed as medicines.
“Hang on a minute”, I can hear you shouting at the page, “did you say medicines and healthcare products?”
British vapers have been scratching their heads over the very same question. How can my Aga-T2 be a healthcare product? How can my bottle of “Mad Murdock’s Radiator Pluid” be a medicine? The official position is that when the British government consulted on how they should regulate vaping products, whether as medicines or other products, the public health community all supported medicines regulation. The trouble with this, as can be seen next, is that this was done from a position of huge ignorance if, indeed, at all.
Mr. Jeremy Mean,
Group Manager of Vigilance and
Risk Management for the MRHA
“It’s really important that we have effective products available for people who smoke so they can cut down, quit or just cut out particular cigarettes, to achieve that we need to get regulation just right” says Mr. Jeremy Mean, Group Manager of Vigilance and Risk Management for the MRHA, who then goes on to add that current controls in the UK are restricted to labelling, electrical safety, plugs and batteries. What he has failed to mention is the list of approvals we all know that have been met by ingredients such as propylene glycol and related uses, not least of which includes inhalers and medicines!
“They’re (the regulations) not focussed on what’s in the products and whether they deliver nicotine effectively. That’s a really big hole for how we deal with these products,” Mean states as fact. So, what UK vapers are looking at now is not just a man, responsible for directly advising on government policy, who is either ignoring or ignorant of swathes of evidence supporting the use of PG/VG PVDs (personal vaping devices) but is also in favour of draconian over-legislation.
Jeremy continues by saying that: “the important thing, we think, is that they need to be effective in reducing the harms of smoking” as if this is the sole criteria for judging PVDs and eLiquid. The man seems to have a fascination building with the word ‘effective’ as well. Not only is this proposed medical legislative approach akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – it’s being used to crack a nut which isn’t there because it has already been eaten having been classed as safe to do so by food and drug laws. Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. Daniel has written in relation to this matter: “How is state’s cold fist to be uncurled from the economy? What has to happen for personal liberty, free enterprise and innovation to flourish? Here’s an idea: how about nothing at all?”
“What evidence there is…” continues Jeremy Mean, and in that expression all but confirms the absence of hard evidence supporting the Mean position “…shows that the products currently out there are of poor quality, are variable and are far from as effective as we would want them to be.”
Poor quality? Variable? Effective? As members of the wider vaping community I would like you to ruminate upon the three points supporting his stance that legislation is not just necessary but now qualified and should be medical.
Following Mr. Mean’s pronouncements, the UK faces legislation in 2016 whereby all nicotine delivery systems will have to seek official certificated approval (not forgetting the incurred administration and cost this will entail). No wonder some are questioning where undue influence may have come from.
Daniel Hannan answers the only relevant question which needed to be posed: Are e-cigarettes bad for you? He writes: “Yes, in the same way that half a bottle of Mersault is bad for you. But, if you were previously smoking actual cigarettes, they are unambiguously good news.” He goes on to explain in the free-market terms beloved by traditional Conservatives: “Here, in short, is the market working as it should. Someone has come up with a product for which there is demand, and is offering a service where none existed before. That’s the process that lifted humanity from the diseased and precarious autarky of the Stone Age to the extraordinary wealth of our own era. But it fills our rulers with horror.”
His anti-legislative position is supported by fellow Tory, North West Conservative MEP, Jacqueline Foster, who is quoted as saying: "I believe this would result in the solution being too weak for people trying to give up smoking, or would require manufacturers to apply for a costly licence to produce medicinal products.”
Ms. Foster adds two more salient points: “For many people, traditional nicotine replacement therapies offered by the National Health Service and the pharmaceutical industry have had very limited success in helping smokers quit permanently” and that she is: “really worried that thousands of e-cig users in the North West are likely to return smoking if the proposal to limit nicotine concentrations to 4mg/ml goes ahead.“
Which leaves the consumers of vaping products, what has been there reaction?
On the popular Internet forum Planet Of The Vapes (planetofthevapes.co.uk) the outrage was predictable; anger at Jeremy Mean, distrust of the MRHA and shock at the statements from and voting by politicians. At the same time a real sense of cohesion was forming between fellow vapers, a sense that a coherent and consistent case can still be put forward to win the day and that this was a battle lost, not a war.
The Electronic Cigarette Consumers Association (ECCA UK) responded to condemn Jeremy Mean’s announcement too, pointing out that none of the 1.3 million people in the UK, who have successfully switched to electronic cigarettes, were consulted during the MRHA’s process. Think back to Mean’s comments about “poor quality”, ECCA believe that you would struggle to find many (if any) in that 1.3 million who would agree with Mean’s assertion.
ECCA highlighted the most glaring problem in all of this: “ECCA UK do believe that quality control of electronic cigarettes is important however we can not support measures that place unnecessary regulatory obstacles in the way of electronic cigarettes whilst allowing continued, unregulated access to the most dangerous nicotine-containing product - tobacco.”
The fight continues.
