EU E-Cig Idiocy Beginning To Emerge

It's been a busy week hence scarcity of content here these past few days, but a tweeted pic from Wednesday deserves a wider sharing.

As an example of how pointless, absurd, staggeringly stupid and tyrannical state vandalism can be, the proposed format for e-liquid bottle labelling after implementation of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) in May next year can't be beaten.

Here, from a screened presentation (hence the low res) is what it will look like.

That's a lot of scaremongering nonsense for an e-cig accessory which has accounted for zero deaths amongst the many millions of European vapers over a ten year period, isn't it? Nice that - in amongst the self-aggrandising bullshit - EU pen-pushers allowed a little blue box for the manufacturer to tell consumers what they're buying though, I suppose.

What's even more insane is where it has to be displayed. Because, y'see, the TPD demands that the maximum bottle size for e-liquid must be 10ml from May 2016. In case you don't know how small that is, here's a 10ml bottle to scale.

All that (misleading) info will have to be printed on a label barely 2 cm tall by 6 cm wide, so will be all but illegible anyway. This is what you get when you pay thousands of regulators in Brussels to sit around thinking about what to regulate next to save themselves from the dole.

I predicted laughable, perverse, and utterly stupid outcomes like this back in 2013, before the TPD had been passed. I wasn't far wrong.

1) It will illustrate - as if it were needed - the wilful disregard the EU has for democracy and balanced debate. 

2) It will show conclusively that the EU is an organisation more interested in self-perpetuating than looking after its citizens in a responsible manner. 

And 3) it will show you how extremist tobacco control bastards operate, because it ain't ever been about health.

So it's not surprising that such a serious political platform as the Leave.EU referendum campaign group sees the TPD as a perfect example of EU over-reach and counterproductive meddling. Worse still, despite the UK being far more enlightened about vaping than other countries, because this is a directive - set in motion by an unelected EU Commission - there is stuff all the Westminster government can do about it, it's happening whether our elected MPs like it or not.

Can we leave yet?