New EU rules bring us one step closer to a tobacco free Europe

The hysteria from certain quarters surrounding vapes (what you may call ecigs) is worrying beyond belief.

It really isn’t a health concern any more, it’s a control thing. Sad but true.

They are clearly labelled as to contents. Which is more than you can say for cigarettes or many other things. Strangely the contents of “inhalators” are disappearing from view.

People drive cars I know, but who’d advocate stopping it because of the proven damage it does to everyone.

Then we have people advocating the use of illegal drugs (and, while the chemical may do, smoking dope doesn’t help) while denying the legal and now the harmless alternatives.

Plus, as the saying goes, rarely do you hear of someone taking a hit of nicotine destroying people, property or lives – then something like alcohol on the other hand…

Nicotine may be addictive though, having easily stopped using vapes, I’d maybe question is it not the crud that’s added that does it.

From a financial point of view, paying in against taking out – no debate – tax, NI and dying sooner, everyone is quids in from working smokers.

Smoking may not be big and clever. But, as I say is legal, and as I’ve said there are worse things.

Vapes are a boon. Unless you want the revenue from tobacco anyway.

The contents of a certain company’s inhalators is rapidly disappearing from view.

Sadly your “evangelical” comments are something we shouldn’t be “proud of”.

Read back in time and weep.

pollocks total pollocks i know you wont show this but you wont get another penny from me untill you change your stance on e-cigs they will save more lives than all the cancer charitys put together you encourage cancer

So cancer research, supporting the ban of the most effective smoking quitting aid as yet. Oh the irony!

Iv just turned 20, have been smoking since I was 14… I manged to give up last year thanks to e-cigarettes. I don’t wheeze or cough any more or have that awful taste constantly in my mouth. I’m so much healthier.

Thanks for the support…Back to cigarettes it is then….

It is appalling that CRUK support a policy that will result in MORE deaths rather than less. But is is really disgusting that CRUK will not engage with their former supporters to justify their position.

Why will CRUK not hustify it’s position?, money?, dogma? or poor leadership?, perhaps all three?.

All these comments and still no response – shame on the lot of you.

Nobody available to field any of the comments ? Yet again? I see the difficulty of approving something that will take lung cancer pretty much off the urgent “to do” list but unfortunately there are loads of other cancers – or will you oppose anything that might obliterate them as well? Not looking good!

what do I think? I think I tried patches and they didnt work, I tried Ecigs and this year have saved over 4000 pounds and not smoked one cigarette. I am not young but ‘fruit’ and ‘vanilla’ appeal to me where tobacco flavours most definitely do not. The thing I think most though is WHY IS CRUK SO AGAINST SOMETHING THAT HAS PROVED IT WORKS AND GETS PEOPLE OFF CIGARETTES? it appears that somebody a CRUK feels they have to get involved despite no side effects having yet been proved. Spend your time fighting actual tobacco cigs and the thousands of chemicals they create and while doing that do some REAL research into ecigs. Tell me something based on fact, not on scaremongering and stop CRUK looking like they are more interested in looking the part than helping those who are actively getting away from cigaretes

“We dream of a day in the not-too-distant future when the death and disease caused by tobacco is a thing of the past.”
With reference to this, the opening line. If this is your dream, why do you support something that will decimate E-cigarettes in their current form.
E-cigarette’s in their current form, have already been tipped by the financial markets, to wipe-out tobacco smoking in 10 to 15 years. Hence the reason why tobacco companies have joined the market. Their tobacco sales fell by 8% last year, while the number of people switching in the UK alone, climbed to around 1.5 million, and still rising.
As for the implementation of the EU directive into law in 2016, given the current rate of up-take. Such a law could result in political suicide. As it’s not just the possible 4 million plus users of e-cigarettes. You need to include all those around them, who are no longer affected by their tobacco smoking.
So “your dream” might well become “your worse nightmare”.

I’d say as long as they are going to classify E-Cigs as tobacco products you will have a fight on you hands. I gave up smoking after 27 years & it was 100% thanks to vaping. I now enjoy my new found activity & see no reason whatsoever to apply heavy regulation to the one answer to the end of tobacco. I would like to continue to enjoy my nicotine vaping in a responsible manner as an adult. I don’t see nicotine as a problem or issue. I don’t drink or take other drugs & i choose freely to use my vaping products.
I strongly oppose the inclusion of e-cigs as a tobacco product & it makes me very angry that the government does not listen to the people who’s lives have been changed for the better by vaping.
I agree with sensible & fair responsible regulation but for the most part that already existed before the new TPD was voted for.

this is nothing short of GENOCIDE if you want the truth follow the MONEY but you don’t want truth DO YOU

You’re crowing about not bowing to the pressure of tobacco companies, and yet you’ve been duped by them – it’s the tobacco companies’ electronic products which escape the strictest regulations under the TPD. It’s so blatant, it’s like CRUK is a puppet for “Big Tobacco” and I will not be giving either my money.

Why no response CRUK, as before your ill informed and unjustifiable stance on e-cigs has alienated a large number of former supporters.

Your lack of response does your organisation no favours, if you truly believe that your policy will reduce deaths you need to justify you position and explain why the many responses are wrong. Your ongoing silence on the subject suggests you are unable to do this. Be brave, do the right thing.

Hello CRUK. I welcome the day when one of your campaigners accosts me in the street and I can tell you face to face why I will never give any money to your organisation EVER.
Tobacco free Europe!! It would have been had the EU kept their noses out of it!

As a vaper of 14 months I know enough to stay ahead of the game and will be preparing for the ban. What worries me is that tobacco smokers of 2016 and beyond will not have this option as they wont have a clue as to what was available leading up to this travesty. They will be condemned to ineffective nrt, rubbish cigalikes from the tobacco companies or stick with smoking.

Do Mcavan and her cronies have any idea what they have done?!

Sorry all my donations are now going to McMillan nurses the ones that have to deal with the aftermath of your decesion to take the money instead of giving a dam!

Not so much a tobacco-free Europe as a Europe in which tobacco users are criminalized.

“A time for celebration?” Read the recent studies before you declare such a thing!

CRUK still no response? this is getting ridiculous. Could a part of the problem exist in the UK equivalent of this http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com.es/2012/11/despite-best-efforts-of-anti-smoking.html?m=1 -of course our FOI. doesn’t quite allow for such ease of access to data as in the USA. It really would be strange if the same level of financing by the Pharma Co was not happening in the UK to so called Health Charities. Where does the line get drawn between Pharma funded lobbying group and what the supposed purpose of a cancer research charity …”you decide”

It is encouraging to see that you have concerns about ecig regulation. Big Tobacco and Pharma have convinced many to support this EU own goal which aims to restrict access to what could be the biggest public health prize of the this century. By over-regulating ecigs, it is clear that many will infer there are risks attached to vaping and continue smoking. The only people to benefit are the purveyors of NRT, with its dismal success rates, tobacco companies and the manufacturers of drugs to treat smoking related diseases.
Who can afford the proposef regulations? Only the tobacco companies who have moved into the ecig market, of course! And, do you think these tobacco companies want smokers to switch from their harmful product to one that is 99% safer? Of course not, they want to market a product that is as (un)successful as NRT and ensures as many smokers as possible continue to buy their products.
It is the many UK based SMEs that have been developing and selling products, that are covered by existing consumer regulation, that appeal to smokers and have enabled them to successfully switch from smoking to vaping.
Inclusion of ecigs in the TPD is nothing other than a disaster for public health.
For the umpteenth time, I repeat my request that the BMA, public health opinion leaders, the MHRA, the Tobacco Control Industry and other opinion leaders such as yourselves actively seek the views of experience vapers. We can help you develop policies that will ensure the benefits of ecigs can be maximised. Why do you ignore us?

Please do what you are funded to do. Find a cure for cancers. Cancer rates up…. Smoking rates down. So what is ACTUALY causing cancer. What will you blame now. Oh that’s right sugar..next. When you finaly run out of “blame” will you actually use your funding for the research your name suggests.

Yes. Well done CRUK for supporting the TPD as it stands. When vapers return to smoking and smokers stop switching to e cigs because the only one on offer are deeply unsatisfying and inefficient that you feel like chucking them in the bin, we’ll remember your fine words and praise for Linda McAlvan.

Well, you wanted to know what we all think and now you do. Your lack of response shows just how much you actually care about the people who are actually affected as opposed to the imaginary ones who you have convinced yourselves might, possibly, maybe like a million to 1 shot at some nebulous point in the future be ever so slightly affected. The only victory won is for keeping yourselves in a job as long as possible & sod the rest of us.
Murder by proxy. If this is your objective then well done. It is a victory for callous self interest & tobacco perpetuation.

If in 2016 the TPD becomes law:
Smoking increases-will you recant and apologise?
Cancer rates start slowly begin to climb to a new record high-will you recant and apologise?
Donations to your organisation begin to fall to a new record low -will you recant and apologise?
Yes I think the last one might tip the balance.

Banning e-cig progresses and giving them to tobacco industry is a progress for you?
Tobacco has never seen its sales as diminished as it is since ecig sales so much in France?
This is due to products and eliquids quality and liberty for vapers.
Letting article 18 in the TPD is slaughtering of european smokers.
European parliament should be ashamed of this! Ecig proved this is the best way to quit smoking and EP gave ecig market to tobacco industry! They’re killing people! The best weapon against tobacco now is in european people’s hand by the EFVI. We can’t rely on the parliament. Only on ourselves.

Could also share on this blog the open letter sent to the European Union and printed in the New Scientist by the scientists (including those commissioned by the EU for TPD) asking them not to implement the regulations relating to e-cigarettes in its current form and complaining that their evidence had either been ignored or completely distorted? By blowing your trumpet over this bill you show no respect for the scientific evidence and are quite happy to celebrate for the one thing that could have put an end to the tobacco industry forever. Sleep well.

Read the comments and weep, CRUK. Possibly even learn. The idiocy of an MEP is nothing to be applauded. Neither is your self congratulatory stance when you will be condoning 105,000 deaths. Utterly disconnected from reality.

A time for celebration?? CRUK’s blinkered attitude towards e-cigs is frankly disgraceful!

How can an establishment like yours ignore all the scientific evidence and common sense that shows what an opportunity to reduce the number of cancer sufferers in the uk that e-cigs present?

Like many others I will no longer be donating money or goods to your cause untill you stop pandering to the pharma and tobbacco companies and take a serious look at the obvious health benefits from e-cigs

Thank you for your support of a policy that will probably send me back to smoking. Vaping has been the only method that has worked for me in 20 odd years and the inferior products that will be the only option will simply not be effective. You show you have no idea of how tobacco addiction works. Rather than crowing a how victory that will sentence many back to tobacco why don’t you actually see and hear what people who have done the relevant research are saying? Is your puritanical approach you are advocating as such you won’t consider effective harm reduction rather the deaths this directive will be directly responsible for? My conscience is clear, is yours?

This is only a victory for tobacco companies and certainly not public health, Forcing Millions of vapers back to Tobacco, the banning of ten packs of cigarettes no worries I’ll just buy twenty instead, So that means more money for the tax man and more chance of people getting smoking related diseases and cancer from tobacco. Real victory indeed NOT. I hope you are proud

So let me get the logic… The biggest threat to tobacco EVER has been quashed by the TPD and millions will look back to smoking as a result – how is that one step closer to tobacco free? I think the person who wrote this does not understand the power of tobacco and pharma money somehow

“New EU rules bring us one step closer to a tobacco free Europe”
No. It’s one step forward and five steps back – and sit

Your opposition to e-cigs shows where you’re really coming from. You don’t want harm reduction – you want to vilify smokers, and e-cigs remove the SHS you’ve been using to generate hate for two decades.

This will result in a huge black market – and it should.

i would also ask C.R.UK just how much money they actually receive from big tobacco and big pharma to sell out people’s health to promote these lies?

you claim a victory but were happy article 18 was also voted through in the TPD which will basically end or should i say try to end all e-cigs except those that are being made and promoted by the big tobacco and big pharma companies. by letting article 18 go through the EU and Linda McAvan MEP have effectively managed to kill off the best tobacco reduction device so far in our history. by letting article 18 get through in its current form the EU and Linda McAvan MEP have effectively put over 1 million lives plus at risk of people who were vaping and will have no choice but to go back to tobacco. you sit there and praise Linda McAvan when this woman is now guilty of telling more lies than Pinocchio, and guilty of helping both big tobacco and big pharma keep their massive profits by keeping EU citizens sick. the NHS’s own figures show that the nicotine patches handed to people on the NHS using tax payers money are 95% to 97% INEFFECTIVE, yes you read that right INEFFECTIVE, in other words they are only working on a maximum of 5 out of every 100 smokers to help them quit smoking, yet the EU pay out millions £’s to big pharma for this crap. e-cigs have less ingredients in than the patches and are 99.9% safer than smoking and worked on 95 to 98% of people to stop them smoking at a cost of 0, thats right ZERO £ of tax payers money, yet the EU led by Linda McAvan MEP have now effectively banned a safe device and methods that were working and not costing tax payers any money. the whole TPD including article 18 is not about stopping smoking it is about making the EU look as if they are doing something yet still helping big pharma and big tobacco still keep their profits from death/ cancer etc. this was about money and certainly was not about improving health.

This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:

Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.

By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.

Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.

Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!

The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:

Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.

146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.

A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.

Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!

This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite

Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.

By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.

Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.

What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.

“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………

Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!

The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:

Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.

146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.

A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.

Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!

As a 55-yr former smoker and successful vaper of 15 months, not only will CRUK never again see a penny from me, now I no longer believe in *any* similar organization and will donate nothing to any of them in future. Congratulations CRUK, your malevolent influence is spreading.

The current ruling on e-cigs is completely counterproductive, it will only serve to drive people back to tobacco. Is this what you want?

Typical of some of the ‘anti smoking’ groups, you have no interest in people using a safer alternative to tobacco or escaping the risk of deadly diseases caused by smoking, you’ve just lost another reguler visitor to your shops !!!!!

Hi CRUK. I’m back! lol. Remember the shelling you got last time around… Here we go again. Now, I know you are not listening but this blog really serves as a recruitment page for e cig activists. I served my apprenticeship with you. (Hi to Alan Beard I see you are here as well)

“We dream of a day in the not-too-distant future when the death and disease caused by tobacco is a thing of the past.” Well done! Like most of the other rubbish you have produced with regard to smoking, you begin with a lie. The truth is that you dread the day when people stop smoking tobacco. You will be out of a job. Oh, and despite the new legislation, people are turning to e cigs in droves while the useless products of your Pharma pals gather dust on supermarket shelves.

If you mean tobacco free to mean tobacco still freely available everywhere and all alternatives controlled by pharmaceutical companies then I suppose the headline is apt.

Otherwise the strict and open to wide interpretation regulations on electronic cigarettes will see smoking prevalence go back up as less alternatives are available to users. I can imagine the meetings now “We need to come up with regulations that are impossible to comply with but let us truthfully say we didn’t ban e cigs.”

It’s very depressing to see CRUK cheering about a law that effectively bans e-cigs, the first technology that has the potential to wipe out tobacco smoking. The best estimate is that the TPD will cause 105,000 unnecessary deaths every year. As an organisation whose aim is supposedly to improve public health you should be ashamed of yourselves for backing this farcical, draconian legislation.

Where is the response to all of these comments from CRUK ?
Do you think along the lines of “it’s only news for a day, so it will blow over”?
Well, you are wrong – we will keep coming back to this time and time again until such times as you actually LISTEN to what we and the scientists have been telling you for long enough, namely that your current stance is going to cost MILLIONS of lives to cancer.
Please, please, please listen up. There is still time for you to change tack and do what is right by this. There is no shame in admitting that you were wrong – we all make mistakes sometimes, as the dalek said while it climbed off of the dustbin.

Yet more interference in what is a recreational product (e-cig). It does not contain tobacco so should not be included in the TPD. It is not a medicine, nicotine is not a cure for any known disease. It could be the finally nail in the coffin of tobacco, only if people stop interfering with the vaping industry. It’s all about the money. Follow the money…big tobacco….big pharma…governments. The ones who stand to lose the most. How many more people must die before you wake up to the facts. Electonic cigarettes are a VERY DISRUPTIVE technology. They have the potential to kill the tobacco industry instead of their customers. Repeal article 18, and support the EFVI.
European Free Vaping Initiative.
Thank you for reading and may your health improve.

You have helped gift the tobacco companies the opportunity to flood the market with their ineffective products so that consumers can keep hopping on and off the smoking merry-go-round.

I am fortunate I can drive so that I can access a pharmacy open beyond 5:30 or one that is open at all on a Sunday. 24 hour shops and 7 day a week late late opening (not just ‘late’) shops are everywhere though. So you have also helped to limit the availability of a cancer preventing product – remembering that the sub 20mg/ml retail ones are not effective for medium to heavy smokers.

Oh and light smokers forced to buy bigger packets of cigarettes will smoke more because running out of cigarettes will occur half as often. Again increasing availability. Kids can always chip in for a big packet and there’s always the ever growing black market in roll up tobacco to turn to.

Shame on you. Between this and your only recently morphing stance on vitamin D/acceptable sunbathing, given another couple of decades you will probably literally have caused more cancer with your actions/advice than would have occurred if you never existed in the first place.

Quite how this is not featured in the most popular blogs is mystifying as a rough and ready count 100+ entries in about 4-5 days must have exceeded all others (even added together). To add further to the story Lord Ridley wrote this excellent article in The Times today http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4020945.ece sorry for some (paywall) but he highlights and reinforces our arguments about the evidence free policy making from Brussels and ultimately what we expect the MHRA to adapt.It’s no longer acceptable to make ivory tower pronouncements CRUK about e-cigs -you must furnish some genuine Scientific facts not some “normalisation” or “gateway” claptrap that are totally unsubstantiated theories and as such are causing your organisations reputation great harm.

I will NEVER EVER support CRUK anymore and I will inform everyone I know that you have praised the fact that more people will die from cancer, because you helped support the e-cig ban. Ecigs would help save millions…perhaps thats what you are worried about, losing the fight. SHAME ON YOU and your MANAGEMENT

Not quite gone how you expected CRUK?

That is because quite simply – you are wrong.

Is the problem that e-cigs have the potential to stop more cancer than you ever have and as a result you are intimidated? It really is the only plausible explanation.

I cannot begin to express my disappointment with this attitude. ‘A giant step backwards’ is more appropriate. I too will be redirecting my money elsewhere – this regulation on e-cigarettes will cost so many lives and send so many back to tobacco – I cannot support anyone who applauds this.

So now it’s out in the open CRUK aren’t interested in saving lives they’re just in it for the money. If people stop smoking they stop dying of cancer so CRUK stop getting funded.
The main thing the TPD did was to make vaping illegal. It did nothing against tobacco other than bigger warnings on the packets, plain packaging and oh yes, now you can’t buy a smaller pack you have to get the full fat version, more carcinogens per pack and more money for CRUK in research funding. We have a cure for smoking (if you can call it a disease, big pharma got away with that one) it’s called vaping, no crap just nicotine.

‘A switch of only 1% of smokers a year from smoking to less harmful nicotine sources, a conservative target, could save around 60,000 lives in only 10 years. Cancer Research UK calls for pure nicotine products (and other cessation products) to be more affordable, attractive and available (e.g. sold over the counter) and for tobacco products to be less affordable, attractive and available’
How strange, this is from CRUKs Policy Statement, easy to find via Google.
This must only refer to Pharma products though, as CRUK are jumping up and down and patting themselves on the back over the major restrictions being introduced for ecigs. How hypocritcal is it possible for them to be? How about this from the same statement?
‘More attractive and efficient pure nicotine products which contain only nicotine and not any other tobacco constituents are needed for heavily addicted smokers, in particular the most disadvantaged, to relieve their cravings without the harmful effects of smoking. ‘
I guess these products are only worth supporting if the manufacturers provide you with a few £100,000 to play with!

I am extremely sad to have seen CRUK’s approach toward E-cigs since 2010. At first, I believed it was down to lack of understanding of the evidence. Then, I felt it must be the influence of tobacco control individuals in your organisation grasping at straws because ‘it looked like smoking’ – An agenda divorced from the evidence. This article convinces me that CRUK are beyond redemption. You will never receive another penny from me or my family. My will has been changed & donations ceased – & all because no-one in CRUK is prepared to be objective & look at the evidence. You are fools to believe that the TPD will result in a tobacco free Europe. Who will be producing the regulated devices? The tobacco companies. Is it in their interests to get people off tobacco? If pharma enter the market they will be no different – too much potential loss from COPD drugs/cancer drugs/NRT. “Lets keep Europe smoking” seems to be CRUK’s aim in this. Shame!

Linda McAvan and yourselves should not be slapping each other on the back. Just look at the sheer volume of negative comments about your stance in this absurd legislation.
This is also something you people should consider:
http://www.eureporter.co/magazine/2014/02/26/105000-smokers-will-be-killed-every-year-by-tpd-ban-on-e-cigarettes-say-manufacturers/

With your blatant support for a tobacco industry funded lobbying in the EU, I will not be donating any more money to CRUK – nor will my family, friends or colleagues.

I have just found out that you are supporting the tobacco industry by going against e-cigarettes. You have just lost a supporter of over 20 years. I have successfully switched away from smoking lit tobacco using the devices that the TPD will outlaw, and have as a result avoided smoking over 2000 cigarettes in the last 6 weeks. I have followed all of the research into this, and it blows your argument out of the water. The only way that organisations like yours start to listen is when money stops coming your way. It now has. You either want smoking related cancers eliminated, or you don’t Make up your minds. The only way to eliminate smoking related diseases is to eliminate tobacco. Nicotine is not the demon, the demon is the chemicals in the tobacco smoke when burned. Naturally occurring nicotine in foodstuffs is never considered carcinogenic – but there I’m preaching to those who know I’m right, but refuse to speak out.

Fed up with being dicated to.

This blog appears to be going the way of all of the other previous blogs that have an e-cig content :- Hundreds of positive comments re effectiveness(efficacy),anger at the illogical pronouncements from a cancer charity,anger that the only “research” conducted by CRUK is by one of its Directors(Hastings- expert on Social Engineering).Once again the charitable status and whole modus operandi of CRUK should be very closely scrutinised by others ..Are the initial set up ideals followed? Is this how the founders of CRUK envisaged it would evolve?

Please read http://www.eureporter.co/magazine/2014/02/26/105000-smokers-will-be-killed-every-year-by-tpd-ban-on-e-cigarettes-say-manufacturers/ for a great summary of what an independent newspaper thinks of the current situation.

“Questions for government officials

Why have officials not done any economic modelling of the health impact of their ban on higher nicotine e-cigarettes?

Why have they stood by the 20mg/ml figure when it has been denounced by the world’s top nicotine scientists as a blatant miscalculation?

How many meetings have Commission officials had with pharmaceutical lobbyists over the last year?

E-Cigarettes Gain Support

“Many regulators are banning e-cigarettes or encumbering them with so many restrictions that they are unlikely to be taken up on the scale required to cut significantly the number of smokers” FT, January 2014
“Now doctors say e-cigarettes do help you quit – and could save millions of lives… so why are petty bureaucrats intent on banning them from public places?” Mail on Sunday – January 2014
“E-cigarettes will save lives if we keep them out of the itching regulatory hands of the health nannies” The Times, October 2013
“It is not that often that we find ourselves in agreement with a vote in the European Parliament.” Daily Telegraph, October 2013
“Careless regulation costs lives… Politicians should stand back and let a thousand e-cig brands bloom.” The Economist, September 2013
Tobacco volumes are plunging

In Europe (Philip Morris sales in Europe fall 7%, October 2013, Philip Morris Cigarette Sales BAT sales in Europe fall 9%, October 2013 BAT Cigarette Sales ). This is coinciding with the explosive growth in the use of e-cigarettes for quit attempts. The monthly tracking data in the official Smoking Toolkit Study shows (slide 4) a roughly 800% increase in smokers using e-cigarettes to quit over the past year.
“We have increased conviction that consumption of e-cigarettes could surpass consumption of conventional cigarettes within the next decade.” Wells Fargo, June 2013
“Through the whole of my career in more than 30 years working in the field of tobacco research the best we have been able to achieve in terms of getting smoking prevalence down is around 1% a year. Now with electronic-cigarettes we have an opportunity to end the tobacco epidemic in my lifetime. This is something that I never thought I would see.” Professor Robert West, speaking on ITV, January 2014
E-cigarettes ‘not a gateway into tobacco’

“There is not as yet any sign that non-smokers are taking up e-cigarettes, even amongst young people their products are tried by smokers,” ASH Chief Executive Deborah Arnott, Marketing Magazine, February 2014
In this Oklahoma Study only one of 43 students whose first use of nicotine was an e-cigarette went on to become a tobacco user.
Scientific research indicates around 20% of UK 15 year olds are regular tobacco smokers.
Alternative nicotine sources like e-cigarettes are less addictive than tobacco Fagerstrom, December 2013
E-cigarettes are safe

“There is no evidence that vaping produces inhalable exposures to contaminants of the aerosol that would warrant health concerns.” Drexel University Study, January 2014
“The chemicals that make cigarettes dangerous are either absent in electronic cigarettes or present only in trace concentrations.” Lancet, July 2013
“The study indicates no apparent risk to human health from e-cigarette emissions.” Inhalation Toxicology, October 2012
“The risk is negligible, and compared with smoking there is no contest.” Professor Robert West, University College London, July 2013
“If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes we would save 5 million deaths” Professor John Britton, Royal College of Physicians, February 2013
The toxicity of vapour in e-cigarettes is “one thousandth of that in cigarette smoke”. NHS website
Competing against pharmaceutical products

Electronic cigarettes could be the “greatest health advance since vaccinations,” Professor David Nutt, BBC News, February 2014
E-cigarettes buyers are “more likely” to be able to quit than if buying nicotine gum and patches. SRNT research, February 2014
“E-cigarettes are by far the most credible alternative to tobacco cigarettes.” Goldman Sachs, August 2013”
taken from http://www.eureporter.co/magazine/2014/02/26/105000-smokers-will-be-killed-every-year-by-tpd-ban-on-e-cigarettes-say-manufacturers/

We could all put down links to positive news articles or studies that CRUK would presumably continue to ignore or dismiss.One of the previous blogs regarding e-cigs had approximately 300 comments ALL in praise of the virtues of #e-cigs, do these actually get read? Does anyone actually care enough? because on past evidence there really is only one answer to that. Charitable status should really be scrutinised by the UK Govt -in a fair + equitable Society it maybe would be!!!

So your tag line is “Our aim is to cover the latest cancer research, including that funded by the charity. We also highlight other relevant material, debunk myths and media scares, and provide links to other helpful resources.” It is obvious from the comments that there are a lot of us out there that think you are wrong. So with your vast resources you should not find it at all difficult to “debunk myths” that we are all wrong and you are right!

Ecigs have succeeded in getting me away from tobacco when I had given up any hope of ever getting out of the tobacco trap. Any person or organisation who does not base its judgements on sound science that proves time and time again that vaping is safer than smoking and/or does not support vapers in their efforts to leave tobacco behind is supporting cancer and death in my eyes. Hence my withdrawal of support for CRUK.

If you think Linda McAvan is a hero, I’d hate to meet you. E-cigarettes offer a step change away from tobacco usage to a safer, cleaner, healthier alternative. And she chose to try to ban them. Shame on you.

Just reread the article again and I realise you are completely out of touch, the only REAL change to current policy is the restriction on vapers. Your lauding of Linda McAvan shows that you don’t have the faintest idea of what is happening in the real world where smokers are switching every day to vaping.
As I have said previously, my regular financial support of CRUK is at an end, how can I possibly support an organisation that wants me to return to smoking ?

Sorry CRUK, the money I have sent your way was wasted it seems, there won’t be any more. It seems that other interests have swayed your views, ones with bigger pockets than the man on the Clapham omnibus.
Travesty.

I will never again support Cancer Research. I will boycott your shops, and refuse to donate, and every time I am asked why I shall explain thus.

I was a smoker for 30 years, and I never intended to stop smoking. I tried though, out of a sense of duty to my children. Patches, Cold turkey (all three pregnancies). Over and over again. I was smoke free for over 5 years at one point, but my weight balooned to 20 stone and the cravings just got worse with time. I was hell to be around.

I tried one of the cigarette style e cigs, and it just wasn’t good enough to keep me off the cigarettes.The day I got my generation 2 Personal vaporiser, illegal under these new laws, and 36mg juice, also illegal soon, I stopped smoking tobacco by choosing to use a safer alternative to the recreational consumer product that I was using. The nicotine I still inhale is as harmful as caffiene. I’ve had no cravings, no mood changes, no weight gain and I haven’t wanted to smoke. I’m not ill, why should my device be regulated as a medicine? I’m not using it as a medicine, any more than you are using your caffienated beverage of choice as a medicine. So what about the smokers like I was who now won’t have the choices I had in order to switch? They’ll keep on smoking tobacco until the day they die. They’ll smoke for the nicotine and die from the smoke because organisations like yours have been totally blinkered in your approach to the ‘harm reduction’ school of thinking.

Those who are not actively fighting for Ecig use, opposing article 18 of the TPD, and standing up for the best disruptive technology against the tobacco industry to ever have been invented, are on the side of cancer and death.

So CRUK thinks that this directive offers flexibility for e cigarettes (last paragraph) and wants to make sure it maximises the benefits and minimises the risks. I’m having a hard job getting my head around where any flexibility comes into this at all and as for benefits and risks – well as far as I’m concerned for two years I have been a vaper (benefit) now the EU wants me to become an ex-vaper (risk). But then we’re not talking about the same benefits and risks are we? It seems to me all the benefits are with the tobacco industry and pharma and all the risks are for us – the people who have decided to take our health into our own hands. Well done CRUK – good job!

*depend not ‘friend’ pesky autocorrect

I gave up smoking after 30 years with the help of ecigarettes, being a regular contributor for many years of money to you I now will no longer give a penny

As a CR supporter and recent convert to ‘vaping’ I too have concerns. My wife is about to try giving up smoking using 24mg menthol 100% VG (tomorrow morning, the liquid arrived today, she can’t use PG) that I was hoping would become MORE available during her attempt not less. That’s a concern. She loves smoking, and I’m not sure that the TPD in its current form can do anything but restrict the public health benefits by reducing availability, restricting efficacy and increasing the costs for both the ‘recreational’ user, and the public purse. Millions of its are quite happy to carry on being guinea pigs at our own risk and expense while you do the research, but why do this?

I’ll be expecting a response, I know you’ll be ignoring these comments because you think they are the rantings of nicotine addicts, but you friend on funding from people like me, so I’ll be sending an email with my personal details so that you can verify my long standing direct debit.

CRUK You suck, and will never get a penny from me ever again, E-Cigs save lives.

I have supported your organisation since my wife – a longtime smoker – died of lung cancer in 2002. If this is the quality of your “research”, I shall support you no longer. After years of trying and failing to quit a thirty-year cigarette habit using the usual NRT products, I used my first ecig more than 12 months ago and have neither smoked nor craved a cigarette since. To seek to restrict them to basic and limited products marketed by the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries is venal, misinformed and roundly despicable.

Any chance of a response from someone with ‘clout’ or are we all talking to a ‘brick wall’?

I’m finding this very hard, but I’ve just cancelled my monthly donation, which has been running for many years, because if this your stance on protecting peoples’ health, you are simply in the pocket of BigT & BigP and I want no part of you. I will divert that money to those that care!

“We have concerns about e-cigarette regulation”
As indeed you should. Big ones. I, and many other vapers, have successfully stopped using tobacco by adopting e-cigs. Vaping works, pharmaceutical-sponsored NRT does not (the relapse rate of smokers using NRT is embarrassingly high). Increasing the cost of vaping and limiting its availability only serves to prolong tobacco use and maintain the prevalence of smoking-induced cancers.

I cannot believe you are crowing about a success when you have just condemned 1000’s to death by supporting a criminal, reprehensible and immoral law than effectively bans the best ever hope of a tobacco free country. You should have diverted some of you funding into probably the best cancer prevention product ever invented. I have used e-cigs for SIX years and haven’t touched a cigarette in all of that time, you people are as out of touch with reality as the government and crooked MEP’s you will never receive a penny from me again.

Not had a cigarette for 11 months now thanks to e cigarettes. I’m much healthier and can say the same for all of the people who got off smoking and switched to vaping! Having A product which is 99% safer than smoking surely is worth backing and supporting? Cancer reaseach had my backing and support. You will not see another pound or penny from me and I will pass this on to everyone else. Do your reaseach and support a device that has the best chance of making the world of tobbaco cigarettes extinct!

I can only echo most of the other comments here, and can say that my experiences, and that of my family is very similar to those expressed in the previous comment by CJ Morgan. Watching a loved one die from a smoking related cancer is too traumatic to adequately express in mere words. The only thing I can add concerns Linda McAvan. MEP of the year? The woman is at best ignorant and deluded, and at worst outright dangerous and corrupt. Or maybe all of the above. This is a sentiment held by millions of vapers, and I hope she is able to see these comments and thousands of others like them on many, many forums and other social media. What she is trying to do is a terrible, unspeakably disgusting thing that if successful, will cost the lives of millions that could have been saved. We can only hope her intentions are simply misguided, and that she could take notice, listen, do some research, look into the real science, and help to undo the damage she is causing. But i doubt it.

How can you be so convinced that you are right on this?, look at the comments, all from ordinary people that have switched to vaping and EVERY single one against you, your actions put these people at risk of an early death.

Big P & T I can understand, if my main objective was to ensure profits are maintained regardless of the human costs, I would have played the e-cig situation exactly as they have. It’s all worked out well for them – an very low reduction in smoking ratse over the next few years and a continuing healthy market for the drugs used to treat smoking related diseases.

But I will never understand your stance, one that you must know will CAUSE deaths. It’s time that someone senior with moral courage stands up and stops your organisation from continuing on with this murderous policy.

“Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading charity dedicated to beating cancer through research.” Really? Well CRUK you have fallen well short of this acclaim! If you could spare a few minutes from congratulating yourselves perhaps you could give a thought to the thousands of EU citizens who will now be put at risk from the very disease you profess to be fighting. By putting e-cigarettes firmly in the hands of the tobacco industry and Big Pharma, I fail to see why you should be celebrating! Oh….and what meaningful research have you done with regard to e-cigarettes to support your stance?

They banned Snus in the EU for exactly the same fears( fears not science!)

Sweden is the only country its allowed to be used…. Sweden has the lowest rates of smoking and smoking related illnesses.

This has NOTHING to do with health!!! its all about money and control.

Well done CRUK you’ve blindly followed the blinded McAven’s idiotic fear mongering, instead of looking at any evidence about E-cigs and they will be consigned to the useless pile of NRT’s.
You could have done great things for humanity if you’d wanted to, but I suppose your pharmaceutical pay masters have you under they’re thumb and you’ve become mindless puppets…
Look at the evidence for Snus and then do the same for E-cigs

Cancer Research, as a title, implies the use of research to reduce the impact of cancer on us.

In this instance, I wish to examine the research upon which Cancer Research has based it’s position on nicotine vapourisers.

I cared for my mother for two and a half years, whilst she suffered a terrible, slow painful and agonising death from cancer in 2008. If she could have had access to ‘e-cigs’, as they are right now 30 years ago, she would most likely still be alive. After smoking for 17 years, and 8 years of failing to quit through totally ineffective nrt replacement products, I finally quit overnight two years ago from the moment i acquired my first ecig.

I used to support and donate to your organisation, but will do so never again. You disgust me and should be ashamed of yourselves. You have helped effectively nullify the potentially biggest lifesaving breakthrough in health-care in living memory based on ignorance and willful disregard of all the science and relevant facts. For what? Money? All you’ve done is help further line the pockets of tobacco manufacturers and big pharma. And congratulations on helping tobacco cut down their packaging production costs by not having to manufacture packs of ten anymore and increasing their profit by forcing smokers of all ages to buy more cigarettes in a single transaction. Well done indeed, what a victory.

I agree with the author: even if it is far for being a perfect Directive, the newly adopted TPD is a major step forward for a tobacco-free Europe. Despite all efforts made by the tobacco industry, the firm determination of relevant stakeholders made possible its adoption and so this new EU law could bring additional public health benefits (saved lives, less tobacco related disease costs, more productivity etc.)

I have two additional points to made:

1. I appreciate very much the hard work of Cancer Research UK. Cancer is definitively a huge burden on the society. The good thing of tobacco control is that all efforts aiming at reducing tobacco consumption would not only have less cancer patients but would contribute to decrease the burden of other smoking related diseases. There are well-know diseases (cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes) but other consequences are not so obvious. I can give you two examples:

a.) Smoking is the main factor of another, little-known respiratory disease called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). WHO estimates that in 2005 5.4 million people died due to tobacco use. Tobacco-related deaths are projected to increase to 8.3 million deaths per year by 2030. So, when we discuss the benefits of the TPD we should not forget the COPD dimension of it.

b.) There is a link between smoking and blindness – nicotine has namely damaging effects on eye-health. Reducing smoking could mean less visual impairment

2.) My other point relates to the opinion of the author saying that the fight is not over, yet. I fully agree. Europe lost the leadership of tobacco control in the world. In order to re-gain it, we should go further. And due to article 24 of the TPD, Member states are provided with the opportunity to do so. UK and Ireland were brave enough to make the first steps. But we need more actions to be done and more Member States so that plainpackaging get a majority in Europe.

I remain at your disposal
(Zoltán is policy coordinator at EPHA)

I agree with the author: even if it is far for being a perfect Directive, the newly adopted TPD is a major step forward for a tobacco-free Europe. Despite all efforts made by the tobacco industry, the firm determination of relevant stakeholders made possible its adoption and so this new EU law could bring additional public health benefits (saved lives, less tobacco related disease costs, more productivity etc.)

I have two additional points to made:

1. I appreciate very much the hard work of Cancer Research UK and and several EPHA members work on this issue (see two examples in my comment). Cancer is definitively a huge burden on the society. The good thing of tobacco control is that all efforts aiming at reducing tobacco consumption would not only have less cancer patients but would contribute to decrease the burden of other smoking related diseases. There are well-know diseases (cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes) but other consequences are not so obvious. I can give you two examples:

a.) Smoking is the main factor of another, little-known respiratory disease called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). WHO estimates that in 2005 5.4 million people died due to tobacco use. Tobacco-related deaths are projected to increase to 8.3 million deaths per year by 2030. So, when we discuss the benefits of the TPD we should not forget the COPD dimension of it.
http://www.copdcoalition.eu/about-copd/prevalence

b.) There is a link between smoking and blindness – nicotine has namely damaging effects on eye-health. Reducing smoking could mean less visual impairment http://www.ecoo.info/2013/12/12/european-coalition-for-vision-statement-on-damaging-effects-of-smoking-on-eye-health/

2.) My other point relates to the opinion of the author saying that the fight is not over, yet. I fully agree. Europe lost the leadership of tobacco control in the world. In order to re-gain it, we should go further. And due to article 24 of the TPD, Member states are provided with the opportunity to do so. UK and Ireland were brave enough to make the first steps. But we need more actions to be done and more Member States so that plainpackaging get a majority in Europe.

I remain at your disposal
(Zoltán is policy coordinator at EPHA)

As someone who has watched a family member die from lung cancer first hand caused by smoking. I was wholeheartedly behind CRUK and their aim to reduce cancer deaths through research. You have strayed badly from your original intentions and have become involved with a bill that will strangle the independant e-cig sellers and allow big tobacco to push their ineffective and I agree safe products to Europe. I will no longer support your organisation and will instead support Mcmillan. I work with kids and have seen them take delight in the gruesome pictures on the packets. I had high hope fro CRUK with respect to e-cigs I had hope they would be brave enough to take a stance on them but you been entirely non-committal. You could have commissioned research into them, to help verify their safety, to find out why they are effective and fin out what people want from them. Instead you celebrate a bill that sounds a death knell for the industry. Bravo.

So you are happy that the one billion people you have sentenced to death this century can contribute to keeping you all in work! You’re happy that you have potentially put 5,000 people on the dole! You’re happy that the greatest (possibly) discovery since penicillin is now going to be controlled (probably by the Pharma and Tobacco industries)! Ashamed of yourselves? You should be! The science is out there and it was (and still is) ignored by you all. So now I have to become a criminal to continue my use or go back to ciggies to keep you all in work. I know which way I will be going.

1 step closer, really….
Bigger health warnings, smokers ignore those. Young people like the dangerous aspect anyway.
Fruit & Vanilla don’t attract young people, they go for the cheapest brand.
Tobacco smuggling… no change.
Ban menthol, why god only knows, you can make any cigarette menthol with the help of some crystals.
New rules for Ecigarettes which will delight the tobacco industry as their biggest competitor ever gets strangled.

I’m not some nanny state do gooder who hasn’t a clue, I’m an ex smoker (who started as a teenager) who was freed from tobacco not by big pharma’s useless offerings but after 40 years of smoking by a decent Ecig… I actually know how things are in the real world.

The money I used to give to you I now give to Dr Farsalinos, you know, someone who will actually spend the money on research on ecigs.

I can’t think of anything to add to the previous comments other that I’m surprised you haven’t yet been taken to task by the Charities Commissioner. When asked to take part in some money making venture at work, I stipulate none of what I raise will go to CRUK and explain the reasons why.

2 days in and your article has been shown to be complete nonsense. It is time for someone in CRUK to speak and tell the truth why you have supported a Directive that will increase deaths. Simply repeating the same old lies is not acceptable.

Is there anyone in CRUK with the moral courage to do so?,

I am bitterly disappointed in that you are not strongly protesting the inclusion of e cigs in the tpd , which could severely reduce the number of cancer related deaths not to mention the deaths and disablement caused by vascular disease. Do your research that,s what you are ment to good at? 105000, thats a number to look up, its the number of smoking related deaths in europe each year. Do you care? Until you do you will not be getting a penny from me.

Well done, CRUK, for keeping me on as a potential future customer – sorry, cancer victim. I managed to stop smoking a year ago thanks to e-cigs, but I don’t know how I’ll get on once the law you’re crowing about takes all the effective ones off the market. If I go back to smoking it’ll be the TPD and your precious McAvan that forced me to. So do excuse me if I don’t congratulate you on the success of your taxpayer-funded lobbying efforts, but I’m not very bloody grateful.

You buch of self satisfied, utterly deluded fools. Try to actually think it through. We make a device proven to be orders of magnitude safer than cigarettes much harder to obtain & significantly less effective whilst ensuring cigarettes are sold in larger packs so people have to buy more at a time & in your view that helps reduce both smoking & the harm from smoking. You would need an IQ below 50 to actually believe that. You have become so wrapped up in rhetoric & the false idea that of it looks like smoking it should be treated as smoking that you have totally lost sight of the ultimate goal. Instead of the TPD helping to reduce smoking & smoking related disease, it protects tobacco by stifling both access to & the effectiveness of a far safer alternative. You continue to bring shame on yourselves and the scientific community by throwing this kind of blatant propaganda into the public domain. Like many, I will never donate to CRUK again & I will be as active in discouraging others donating to you as you are in spouting this nonsense.
You have no mandate for your actions. Go back to what you are supposed to be doing & leave the real science of harm reduction to the grown ups.

No more fonds from me !

Posting 2 of 2
The liquid I purchase I know is not adulterated like NRT products (sulphur dioxide, anyone) because I’m sourcing components of pharmaceutical quality and preparing with strict health and safety procedures.

I use coils without nickel (unlike cartridges and disposables)

In what way, for me, is heavy regulation better than the light regulation (purity, labelling, age restrictions) which the consumers and industry were encouraging?

I am ashamed to have been supporting Cancer Research UK in the past and find myself now wondering how much of my donations is being directed towards lazy policy making and research of the quality of the concessionaires who wrote such a poorly drafted and ill considered section of the otherwise laudable revision of the European Tobacco Products Directive.

Posting 1 of 2
The measures to discourage tobacco are laudable (although the idea of plain packaging or horrific pictures deterring because they are larger is questionable given the research).

I AM AN EX SMOKER. Six months ago I would have been smoking my sixth cigarette of the day whilst typing this (09:48) and despite repeated (at least 30) attempts using various NRT and will power, including supermarket bought e-cigarettes and prescribed Nicolittes, the longest i’d previously been clean was two months.
The regulations relating to electronic cigarettes were based on rhetoric (nicotine causes cancer, for instance) and scientific reports which were grossly misinterpreted to suit the directive (according, publicly, by the authors).

The directive bans every refillable device on the market today and regulations, despite assurances to the contrary, place the future of electronic cigarettes firmly in the hands of the multinational tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, both of whom are suffering declining sales (tobacco products and smoking cessation) at the hands of e-cigs.
From my personal perspective, I would not have been able to make this shift without 24mg liquid (18mg did not work sufficiently) – I am now down to 12mg but this is only because I am using a more efficient device than will be allowed in future – so efficient that I do not need to inhale).

I first tried an ecig two years ago, after having smoked for more than 30 years (in spite of attempting to quit with patches/gums etc). It wasn’t very good, being one of those models that looked like a cigarette….but it was good enough to show me there was some potential in it. I did some research and subsequently purched a bigger, more powerful device…and I also bought 36mg eliquid.
That did the trick – it was the last time I smoked.
And now I see that the EU has decided that the setup I used to successfully switch to a safer method of using nicotine (and that I still use) will be outlawed.

Time for a celebration? I suppose that depends on what your goals are. At best this directive hands ecigs over to BIg P…and, ironically, Big T – and ensures the continued sale of ineffective NRT to smokers.
At worst it means some people will die from smoking related diseases who might otherwise have had the opportunity to survive.
Nice work.

These new rules don’t bring us closer to a tobacco free Europe, they are slamming on the brakes and helping big tobacco and big pharma keep up their dance of selling tobacco, selling NRTs for a failed quit attempt, sell more tobacco, sell more NRTs for yet another failed quit attempt.

In the meantime people are dying, all the while e-cigrattes are regulated so violently that there’s questions as to whether or not any of the current products on the market will be considered legal once the regulations are in place.

This is not progress. This is not a positive step in the right direction. This is murder by mandate.

The measures to discourage tobacco are laudable (although the idea of plain packaging or horrific pictures deterring because they are larger is questionable given the research).
I AM AN EX SMOKER. Six months ago I would have been smoking my sixth cigarette of the day whilst typing this (09:48) and despite repeated (at least 30) attempts using various NRT and will power, including supermarket bought e-cigarettes and prescribed Nicolittes, the longest i’d previously been clean was two months.
The regulations relating to electronic cigarettes were based on rhetoric (nicotine causes cancer, for instance) and scientific reports which were grossly misinterpreted to suit the directive (according, publicly, by the authors).
The directive bans every refillable device on the market today and regulations, despite assurances to the contrary, place the future of electronic cigarettes firmly in the hands of the multinational tobacco and pharmaceutical companies, both of whom are suffering declining sales (tobacco products and smoking cessation) at the hands of e-cigs.
From my personal perspective, I would not have been able to make this shift without 24mg liquid (18mg did not work sufficiently) – I am now down to 12mg but this is only because I am using a more efficient device than will be allowed in future – so efficient that I do not need to inhale).
The liquid I purchase I know is not adulterated like NRT products (sulphur dioxide, anyone) because I’m sourcing components of pharmaceutical quality and preparing with strict health and safety procedures.
I use coils without nickel (unlike cartridges and disposables)
In what way, for me, is heavy regulation better than the light regulation (purity, labelling, age restrictions) which the consumers and industry were encouraging?

I am ashamed to have been supporting Cancer Research UK in the past and find myself now wondering how much of my donations is being directed towards lazy policy making and research of the quality of the concessionaires who wrote such a poorly drafted and ill considered section of the otherwise laudable revision of the European Tobacco Products Directive.

You and your kind disgust me. Ignore the facts and spout the pre-prepared lies given you by you friends. It’s not about health, it’s about the money.

Do your research on e cigarettes before you condem them please.

Wow. How blinkered are you CRUK? Isn’t your job to research & one day cure cancer? Surely a device that could stop smoking happening IN ONE GENERATION would be a huge win for you guys? No, instead you chose to be swayed by pharmaceutical companies and their beliefs.
I’ve been proudly using electronic cigarettes for nearly a year now, after a close friend died of lung cancer. It took a death for me to wise up.
Pictures on packets don’t stop people smoking, it’s a strange view to have. What’s next, distorted livers on alcohol packaging or something more shocking. After a while, people don’t notice them, they become part of the background. Obviously no-one there has a clue what you’re doing. You will no longer be getting any money from me.

It is time you listened to those of us who have found comfort from using an electronic cigarette.
My husband has Terminal Cancer, which may or may not have been smoking induced. Oh he tried to break his 48 year habit, but failed repeatedly. Even during the time he was having Chemo, he knew that each cigarette was a step nearer to premature death. Then we found an e-cig that was right for him, that was 9 months ago, and he is feeling better in himself, even chirpy, and no one has the right to destroy that for him, or indeed anyone else ..
All of us in this family use e-cigs, none of us wanted or indeed ever succeeded in stopping cigarettes using NRT or going cold turkey.
Now my daughter and I will celebrate 5 years of non burning tobacco in March. The inclusion of e-cigs in the TPD will mean we are given the choice of using the ones currently on sale in Pharmacies, which are way too expensive and would not satisfy our nicotine needs, going back to smoking, or lastly buying “unknown” products on the Black Market.
No Research? there is plenty, the problem is, no one, not even CancerUK have bothered to look for it. try reading this for a start http://www.scribd.com/doc/195347257/Nicotine-and-Health.
I am bitterly disappointed at the Sheep like attitude of CancerUK, you blindly followed the cherry picked info out there and did nothing yourself to find out the facts.

I perfectly understand your joy: the Tobacco Products Directive will not cause any damage to the tobacco industry (do you really believe that revolting images will save lives?) but instead it kills the only effective smoking cessation device.
As a consequence, there will be plenty of smokers and cancer for you to justify the money you receive.
Well done, CRUK!

WOW THIS IS GREAT NEWS just too bad that DRUGS AINT LEGAL TOO AND GIVE MORE PROBLEMS the tpd is made to kil the less harmfull electronic sigarettes and secures the income of the big Tobacco company’s
people don’t quit smoking , the eu just makes smoking illigal like hard drugs

CRUK has become nothing short of a disgrace. You are supposed to research cancer, nothing more, nothing less. That’s what the Great British public give donations for you to do, You are NOT a political party and you should NOT be swayed or funded by the Pharma companies to do their bidding. What you are gloating over in this post is utterly contemptuous. Your ideology will kill millions and make no mistake, their will be retributions. I am ashamed of MYSELF for having donated to your cause in the past. I will now make it my lifetime goal to see that the people near and dear to me NEVER give you another bolt. What a disgrace of an organisation you have been exposed to be. Shame on the lot of you.

This tells me that neither the EU or CRUK have any understanding of the current or potential benefits of E-Juice, Tanks, Cartomisers, Drippers or any of the other technological revolutions that have “saved” many of us from the eventual torment of tobacco combustion related disease. Its seems a desperate shame that those who claim to be preventing cancer in the UK can be so without knowledge that they not only support but blindly delight in the TPD and what it has done to the E-Gigs phenomenon. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Some one said that the TPD was so badly constructed that it must have been written on the back of a fag packet. I disagree, I can only think that it was thought up by those who produce fag packets. You are celebrating lip service to public health whilst playing into the hands of the big tobacco and big pharma who must be dancing with glee at the EU parliament’s utter stupidity. Do you truly believe that all smokers are short sighted? Do you really think that they will suddenly see a warning that covers 65% of the packet and say “I never noticed that warning before, now that I have, I will immediately give up!” I think not!
The one product that might have actually made a difference is e-cigarettes but thanks to Ms McAvan’s they will be rendered utterly ineffective.
I used to both donate money to CRUK and raise money whenever possible, I shall never do so again.

And the best joke of the year: “Linda McAven for MEP of the year!” She is a woman without conscience!

I would have been a smoker for life, I never intended to stop but found 36mg/ml works for me. You applaud the fact I am being forced back to tobacco?
As said before nicotine is nothing to do with you, remember you still need to do a little more work on the important things you pretend to represent.

“e-cigarettes” as you call them allowed me to quit cigarettes after 40 years. 1 year tobacco free – and I can imagine doing without e-cigarettes some day. Conventional NRT was and is next to useless.
I’m very afraid that “e-cigarette regulation” is going to deny this chance of quitting cigarettes to very many others. Any inhibition on the convenience and availability of e-cigarettes is a guaranteed increase in the harm caused by using tobacco via combustion.

Although there are not many ‘thumbs down’ on these comments which says a lot, those that have chosen to do this are obviously in favour of people contracting tobacco related cancer. Hope they can sleep at night.

Dream on. TPD was never about health. With ecigs on the rise, tobacco is at its kodak moment making Tobacco Control obsolete. Rather, the TPD is a smokescreen to protect pharma profits. Can’t distinguish between a health ‘expert’ and a pharma lobbyist these days.

Crow all you want over your imagined success but history will judge you for your murderous duplicity.

“We dream of a day in the not-too-distant future when the death and disease caused by tobacco is a thing of the past”.

You have to be joking here. You would ll be out of work. But you know of course that these new measures against tobacco cigarettes will have little to (better) no effect on the number of smokers so your jobs are still secure. In addition you chose to fight tooth and nail against an invention (e-“cigarettes”)that has proven in practice that it can significantly reduce the number of smokers and also smoking diseases. Who are you trying to fool. To me this is just deathmongering by another name. and it pleases me at least that, through the advent of electronic media…all vapers throughout Europe (and even in the U.S.A. and Canada) are now fully aware of your REAL goals. Cancer donations will most probably soon dry up. It would not surprise me in the least if there was already a cure and it is being purposely kept secret.

Have to applaud the efforts to control Tobacco products. However, the problem is that E Cigarettes are not tobacco products. Nicotine is relatively harmless and is not the key toxin that leads to cancer and other smoking related illnesses.

Using E cigarettes is not smoking. Vaping is relatively safe and with over 1 million users in the UK Ecigs have contributed more to public health than all the NRT products have achieved in a decade.

Fools, the TPD will increase the amount of smoking, by virtually taking the E-Cigs that work really well with juice over 20mg/ml, all that will do is force people who need higher levels of nicotine back to lit tobacco, millions of them.
The biggest health disaster of the Century and you are crowing.

I also told you what I thought and you have refused to show that too. You are on the wrong side CRUK. History will show this.

E-cigs do not cause cancer! Why are you celebrating forcing vapers back to cancer causing smoke? I suppose you haven’t heard about the Swedish having the lowest cancer rate because of snus.

What are your concerns about ecig regulation? What risks exactly are to be minimised?

As others have said the TPD will do nothing but bring down one of the best safer alternatives to smoking down to the same level as NRT, in other words a failure.
While people were so busy bashing smoking and anything that looks like it they managed to kill the one chance that long term smokers have to stay off smoking long term.
Good job!
Just look at Snus as an example of ridiculous legislation that kills far more than it saves.
Snus was banned a long time ago and lots have died from smoking related illnesses in that time that Snus may have had the chance to save, now it’s Ecigs.
The EU doesn’t learn/ care, nor does public health, NGOs like yourselves and tobacco control.
All complicit in causing many 1000s of needless deaths.
Anything that reduces the effectiveness of ecigs reduces the benefits to smokers.
I also agree that as ecigs don’t cause cancer they aren’t your concern.

you will never ever get anotherpenny off me for helping to cause cancer not cure it with your pathetic attitude to e-cigs

You state the Tobacco Industry tried to subvert the TPD – this is wrong TVECA, the Tobacco Industries e-cigarette mouthpiece (as part of CORESTA) was wholeheartedly behind the restrictions you delight in.
Hope that makes you very happy.

I’ve also told you what I think… and you also seem unable to publish that, either. Dis. Graceful.

I’ve told you what I think – you seem to feel unable to publish it!!!

Linda McAvan should be certified clinically insane.

‘Throwing out the baby with the bath water’ springs to mind. All the packaging redesigns, plus the currently licensed NRTs will have little or no effect on smokers. Just money grabbing big business.

E-cigs, (NOT the look a likes being brought out by Big T to reclaim their losses) however, have proven to work for me and so many of my contacts. Anything that makes them harder to obtain will no doubt force many people back to the analogues, and stop people trying them in order to reclaim their health and wealth. I just hope that those who support this absurdity finally make contact with their conscience.

Maintaining the ban on Snus and the severe restrictions on Ecigs will increase tobacco harm. Neither cause cancer, so what possible interest would CRUK have in their regulation?

It is worth pointing out that the TPD by the EU’s own estimation is only anticipated to reduce smoking rates by 2% over the next 5 years, hardly a victory over smoking.

In fact the TPD will result in a net increase in smoking deaths compared to doing nothing at all. The restrictions on e-cigs are medical regulation by the back door.

20mg/ml limit – arbitrary figure with no scientific basis, the scientist involved formally complained that his work had been distorted. This makes the heaviest of smokers less likely to switch successfully and more likley to die.
Non leak cartridges – If you hit a nuclear waste container hard enough, it will leak. This simply provides a convenient excuse to basically ban most models.
10ml refill maximum size – another arbitrary figure with no basis in either science or common sense, especially as the same directive bans smaller real cig packages in favour of larger ones.

The list goes on and contains enough requirements to remove most, if not all current products. The only people who are happy are Big P who will not start to a dramatic drop in their smoking related disease treatments & Big T who will be one of the few who have a chance to meet the new requirements.

For CRUK to trumpet this as a great success is both sad and infuriating, you are a charity dedicated to reducing cancer yet have supported a move that will kill 100000 people a year in the EU – http://www.vaping.com/tpd/uploads/EUbanimpact.pdf.

As for Linda, if I repeated even a fraction of what most vapers think, this post would be removed rather quickly.

It is probably too late now, but a change in your stance may at least help in eventually overturning this murderously poor directive

Tell you what I think? Don`t tempt me. The very terms CRUK and Linda McAven make me want to vomit. Hope you have some pills to help you sleep at night.

Unfortunately the TPD regarding e-cigarettes completely fails to understand how e-cigarettes, and indeed nicotine replacement of any kind, work. With the exception of patches, all nicotine-containing products are dosed on demand. Limiting the strength of e-juice to 20mg/ml will simply make it harder, if not impossible, for a significant proportion of smokers to get through the first few days and force others to consume greater quantities of the other ingredients in order to get the nicotine they need to stay off tobacco.

I find it impossible to understand your stance on e-cigarettes. They have the potential to completely eliminate smoking tobacco as a consumer product within a decade. Your position is completely illogical and entirely unjustifiable. I suggest you review it as a matter of urgency. The potential for harm is immense and entirely at odds with CRUK’s stated aims.

and this is why I will never support CRUK (and actively discourage others from doing so) in the future… restrictions on ecigs will cost lives and the whole TPD process shows just how corrupt/disconnected MEPs are from their consistuents.

You should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves for the way you have consigned millions of people to an early death with your pathetic and unsupported posturing against e-cigs.
Cancer Research UK will not see another penny of mine

The Tobacco Products Directive will have absolutely no effect on the sales of tobacco. Apart from the part that destroys the one thing that is capable of making smoked tobacco history, that is of course the e-cig . More warnings on packets , will do nothing apart from increase sales of bespoke cigarette cases. Banning packs of 10 forces smokers to buy larger quantities of tobacco at a time , they will subsequently smoke more, anyone with any real world experience will know that. Kids will have larger stocks of parents cigs to pilfer from. Real world experience will tell you this will happen too. The one thing that actually has reduced smoking to an historical low in record time is to regulated more strictly than all tobacco products. It is perverse in the extreme. CRUK was a charity I donated to , I stopped that when it’s entirely unscientific and absolutely immoral position on e-cigs was made public. A disgrace .

The TPD forecasts 2.4m quitters over the next 5 years.Germany,France and UK have 2m ecigs users each.Pharmaceutical lobbying wins again – NRT and stop smoking drug sales protected.If estimates are right that ecigs could overtake tobacco within 10 years,you become a bigger threat to public health than the tobacco industry – which sums up your misguided ideology.

The ‘tobbaco products’ specifics of the TPD are, in terms of projected effectiveness… pitiful… and yet you publicly crow about a victory? The single greatest opportunity to reduce deaths and illness caused by tobacco products (the electronic cigarette) has been willfully squandered and deliberately suborned to the benefit of pharmaceutical industries… with your connivance… and you speak of ‘celebration?’ Obscene. Simply obscene. Your stance regarding e-cigs will be shown to be completely misguided and detrimental to health… that is a foregone conclusion… and your role in attempts to put the vested interest, market-dominance, and profit-motives of your cash-backers and ideological supporters will not be forgotten. Shame on you.

I hope your research into lung cancer has improved the survival rates as you and the rest of your pharma shill buddies have consigned MILLIONS to it. Hope your proud of yourselves. Cancer Causing UK would be a better name.

YOU have no idea how this will drive vapers back to smoking unless we source the black market.I have severe COPD and since vaping my syprometry results have improved no end.Even the Quickmist spray includes more chemicals than Ejuice does.
There is one thing about you agreeing to the TPD is that your funding will go up from BIG P.If you really wanted cancer to be cut you wouldn”t be against Ecigs and you would promote Ecigs as the safer alternative but then you may be out of jobs if you did that.You really are hypocrites.

Your “concerns about e-cig regulation” have been mirrored in previous blogs over the months, totally evidence free theoretical concerns of course. The overwhelming weight of scientific and real world evidence points to e-cigarettes as the means of reducing the population smoking rates from around its current 20%, plain packaging and other similar measures tinker with the problem,but will not deliver what their supporters wish. The totally illogical and disproportionate regulations on e-cigs proposed and passed by the Euro Parliament yesterday deserves zero praise from any neutral observer.

well thats me back on the fags thanks a bunch macaven the one thing that got me off the fags is now basically banned

I totally agree with Dr Barry Norton, the regulation of e-cigs in the TPD is a travesty. E-cigs, especially generation 2 & 3 style products are helping to save millions of lives throughout the EU. With the restrictions placed on these particular e-cigs there will be many ex-smokers returning to analogue cigarettes, exactly the opposite to what was supposed to have been achieved ie less smokers. Shame on the voters who supported such restrictions on e-cigs. These have been an innovative product until now, and highly successful, all that will be gone within a couple of years.

As an ex-smoker using both generation 2 & 3 e-cigs for more than 9 months now, after having smoked for 40 years, and never having one single analogue cigarette since the day I started vaping I am both disappointed and disgusted with the EU for placing tough regulations on a life-saving product.

Cancer Research supported regulation of e-cigarettes in the TPD and the result is that small disposable devices that resemble cigarettes, of the type in which Big Tobacco have invested, will be relatively unconstrained, whereas sensibly-sized refillable tanks, as used on devices that have nothing but nicotine in common with cigarettes, will be banned. You should be ashamed of yourselves. This is a travesty.