What may have swung it is the vast level of responses from ordinary vapers detailing positive experiences with their devices. Any decision which sought to ban e-cigs would have exhibited high hypocrisy from a government which continually talks of the harm from cigarettes. To ban something which many use as an avenue by which to do exactly what the state is ordering them to do would have been quite laughable. Without supply of ingredients and components to carry on vaping, a lot of people would have naturally returned to tobacco use.The MHRA exhibited great wisdom back then by stalling for a period of 18 months. They have still to report on what they are going to do, but talk of a ban has since softened into conflicting rumours about regulation. In truth, the arrival of the e-cig has taken the entire tobacco control industry out of their lazy comfort zone and thrust them into a divisive quandary.
Fast forward two years and now vapers are faced with the EU and its ridiculous Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) which threatens to snuff out e-cigs and force vapers back to tobacco ... much to the delight of competing pharmaceutical manufacturers of ineffective patches and gum.
Again, though, vapers are stepping up to the plate. The EU merely see figures on a computer printout - but here, in glorious technicolour, are the real people that John Dalli's appalling document is seeking to punish for simply doing what they have been told.
UK MEPs should take note (and many are). The TPD - written and sustained by political pygmies - is disgraceful policy from the EU and should have nothing to do with non-tobacco e-cigs. There are one million e-cig users in the UK alone - plus many more in the wider EU - who will be harmed by the incompetence of John Dalli and Tonio Borg if it is allowed to proceed without wholesale amendment.
Additionally, each tobacco control industry dinosaur who still promotes irrational bans and/or hysterical restrictions on e-cig use should take their own medicine and recognise that the date of guilty knowledge is now past. Their actions today may very well have punishable implications in their future. Especially since vapers have repeatedly proven themselves organised and motivated enough to challenge ignorant threats and the people behind them.
All power to them, I say.
For further reading, see the liberal argument for electronic cigarettes and search the Twitter hashtag #EUecigBAN.
