EU is planning BREACH OF CONSTITUTION

[Uma]

EU is planning breach of constitution(s)

The following press release was sent out by the German Vapers association IG-ED e.V. in German on Dec. 1st, 2013 and can be found in German here: http://ig-ed.org/2013/12/eu-kommission-plant-verfassungsbruch-oder-wie-demokratie-zur-posse-verkommt/

I just finished the translation for international communities -- for your info or, if you want to circulate it or bring it to the attention of your national press, fine, go ahead.

Best regards,

Hazel

~~~~~~~~

EU is planning breach of the constitution

Or: how democracy degenerates ever more into a farce

A recently leaked EU commission document of unverified origin shows that the EU commission plans to curb the democratic right to free speech in a coup de main at the next trialogue meetings between 3rd and 16th December.

What is it about?

Over the last 2 years, the EU has been working on a revision of the tobacco products directive (TPD2). At the recommendation of the WHO framework of the tobacco control (FCTC) they now also want to regulate the e-cigarette within the tobacco directive; in order to bring the consumption under the same regulations control mechanisms which previously already have been applied to the consumption of tobacco and to forbid them step by step.

Thus, a non-tobacco containing product, which hasnt been approved as a medical product, shall be treated in a tobacco directive more restrictively than the tobacco product itself though it doesnt even contain any tobacco.

However, this contradiction doesnt bar the EU Commission from sticking to their plans. The e-cigarette is a new product, widely unknown to the Members of European Parliament, and before it can even develop any noteworthy market potential, one strives to rather prohibit them on the quiet with the help of deceptive media campaigns and debatable statements of experts, the latter often being merely self-appointed.

What they didnt envisage though were well-informed, partly scientifically experienced, and convinced users of the e-cigarette (generally known as vapers), who had a first-hand experience of the positive effects of the switch from tobacco to e-cigarettes. They couldnt put anything over on them; moreover those users ensured popularity, technical progress, scientific researches and finally initialized a transboundary consumer initiative against the prohibition efforts.

As a consequence, the European Parliament contradicts the plans of the EU-Commission and leaves the e-cigarette within the tobacco directive TPD2 wrongly so, and contrary to the distinct advice of JURI, the European Legal Committee as a non-tobacco product, however also decides for a moderate regulation which the vapers could have accepted for the time being, even though gnashing their teeth.

As the Parliament has to find an agreement with both the European Commission and the Council, the Commission engineers a new scheme: in a very predictive paragraph, the citizen shall be deterred in the future to gather their own information, to build pan-European information channels or even, to use existing ones. Under the cloak of the ban on advertising, the Commission claims brazenly to remove the right to free information as well as the freedom of speech!

In the new claims regarding the TPD2 and hidden within the ban on advertising there is a passage which reads:

d) any form of public or private contribution to radio programmes with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes is prohibited;

e) any form of public or private contribution to any event, activity or individual with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting electronic cigarettes and involving or taking place in several Member States or otherwise having cross-border effects is prohibited;

This means nothing else but a factual ban of e-cigarette forums, blogs, facebook groups, youtube channels, as well as consumers associations and interest groups related to the e-cigarette!

The Vaping Community is well linked-up Europe-wide, they help each other with technical problems, invent novelties, discard useless junk, and above all agitate politically against the regulation frenzy of the EU as in the above-mentioned consumers campaign.

Interest groups and consumers associations like the IG-ED e.V. in Germany (www.iged-org/) are organized by languages and not by national borders, and subsequently would then be forbidden to ever speak out in any media at all.

This is a clear violation of the fundamental democratic right of freedom of expression!

Possibly, this would never have been known to the public, if the EU-Commission had not tried to sell its further claims as a compromise. The truth however, is that they are trying to defend the sinecures of the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries against the e-cigarette: they lay down rules which exclude any of the existing and well-working products and therefore destroy everything which adversely affects their own concepts. By cheer chance by these rules only completely outdated and disputable products of the tobacco industry would get a chance, an industy which currently has begun to edge into the booming market. Noticeably, the pharmaceutical industry seems to be reserved and probably will not enter the market until it can feel safe enough to do so.

Some examples:

-- Ban of refillable atomizers and of liquid refills

The technical development and progress has gained momentum by leaps and bounds in the past few years. From the initial cartridge technology, vapers have long moved on to sophisticated and well-performing tank atomizer systems. In these however, the tobacco companies have only little interest; afer all you can reutilize them nearly without limit, and therefore then own a permanently enduring product which is not desirable as seen from the perspective of competition and profiteering. The pharmaceutical industry, on the other hand, knows how to fill little cartidges a million times. They only have to know what extactly they will be allowed to fill them with.

-- Ban of nearly all flavours which arent also used in NRTs

Without any scientific reasoning and therefore, meaningless. Mostly the argument is urged that tasty liquids beguile kids to vaping and subsequently, smoking. Several studies have already conclusively falsified this assumption.

-- Limitation of nicotine concentration in liquids at 20 mg/ml

Not backed up by science. On the contrary, studies show that sometimes even higher concentrations of nicotine might be recommendable for the switch from tobacco to vapor. The boundary value suggested by the EU Commission has been set merely gratuitiously and lacks any scientific basis.

-- Limitation of nicotine volume in liquids at 10 mg/ml per packaging unit

The only purpose of this rule would be to enable a complete ban of everything but the (completely outdated) cartridge systems of the tobacco industry.

-- Ban of cross-border trading as well as internet trade

Obviously the Commission is eager to regress the EU back in to the 1960s.

-- Steady output of nicotine

Why should a harm-reduced product be able to do something which the really harmful product cant do either? For the time being, there is no semi-luxury product available which would fulfill the requirement of a steady output of the effective agent, something that is typical and normal for pharmaceuticals only. So then, why should this be any different in the distinctly harmreduced alternative to cigarettes?

Here, the EU Commission is doing blatantly and tastelessly the very thing that Commissioner Tonio Borg falsely accused some EU-MEPs of: lobbying for the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.

Regardless of any health consequences the Commission is trying to destroy a useful product in order to codify the tobacco industry monopoly on nicotine as well as to continuously guarantee the pharmaceutical industry their safe revenues which they generate with almost ineffective nicotine substitutes. Scientific findings pro e-vaping are constantly being ignored and maliciously negated.

Critical and informed users and citizens would be gagged in the future and quite obviously be deprived of their basic civil rights. In general, the freedom of speech is being limited in this way only by political systems that previously had appeared to be extinct in European culture. But the European Commission manages to turn democracies gradually and insidiously into a European dictatorship ("Eurokratur").

.

© IG-ED e.V. December 1st, 2013 --- free for publishing in your country; we would be grateful for indication of source

Edited December 6, 2013 by Uma

[Bebop]

Wow. It's getting ugly, fast.

It's fascinating. The vaping issue could be the largest example of the attempt to quash a viable and clearly superior health product - let's face it, and call it what it is - vaping is largely a smoking cessation activity that is empirically miles ahead of any other device or therapy and, it is Successful!

The ignorance is hard to believe. The evil is appalling.

[HelloMiakoda]

Government is evil. I've known that for a long time.

[Patricia]

It scares the HELL out of me. I just found this great instrument that actually keeps me from smoking and killing myself and there are people who are fighting to take it away and ban it. They don't care if we live or die. I wish I could use my Nursing status to help swing this thing in our direction but for now I do at least have the ability to carry the information I have learned about E-Cigs to my patients who are struggling to quit smoking because it is killing them.

[Uma]

I know right. It's appalling how they fight the safer alternatives so hard. Millions of lives vs millions of dollars... But they're too greedy to realize that these millions of lives actually have money to spend again, to stir the economy back to par, if they'd just let us be. In other words, in the long run, they'd be richer off than they are now with temporary cash incentives they receive to date.

[Uma]

Steve's finished outline.

http://free.yudu.com/item/details/1515019/EPHA-Briefing-note-review

:thumbs up:

[HelloMiakoda]

Steve's finished outline.

http://free.yudu.com/item/details/1515019/EPHA-Briefing-note-review

:thumbs up:

Read it... It is well written.