2018/09

For those of you most familiar with the modus operandi of the EU institutions, this won’t come as much of a surprise. Back in March 2017, the Commission published the results of a public consultation on whether or not e-cigs should be subject to a tobacco-style excise.

Naturally, the overwhelming answer was no. With the largest group of respondents being individuals. Naturally, being the EU, they weren’t particularly satisfied with such a response and all went quiet. Only for them to produce yet another consultation asking the same questions.

With the recent announcement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb talking about the possibility of curtailing the marketing and selling of flavoured vapour products, it is timely that the Centre for Substance Use Research should have recently published a paper on the topic.

The CSUR came under fire when it published the Pleasure of Smoking report because, among other things, CSUR receives some funding from (you guessed it) the tobacco industry. Notably British American Tobacco and PMI. The same PMI that has kickstarted the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. So naturally, you can assume that the usual suspects will view this paper with the same disdain.

Yesterday demonstrated the effects of a coordinated effort to discredit one of the most disruptive technologies that has several groups within “public health” worried. Not only for their funding source, which is neither here nor there, but also for the steadily decreasing relevance.

Naturally, the media headlines don"t really get to the bottom of the issue:

FDA puts e-cig makers on notice: Fix “epidemic” teen use or products may be pulled from market

As both Snowdon and Puddlecote reported today, the EU - along with 167 other signatories to the WHO FCTC - are set to travel to Geneva for the Conference Of the Parties session 8 (COP8), whereby they’ll completely ignore the founding principles of the Protocol - as I discussed recently.

As with any gathering of the soulless anti-smoking extremists, there’s always going to be something that is a step too far. In this case, it is all about the “depiction of tobacco use in the arts”. The proposal for this is here, whereupon the ‘Expert Group’ grandly report thus: