Ireland: standardised packaging of e-cigarettes?
Friday, January 30, 2015 at 17:14 A bill aimed at regulating the sale, marketing and use of e-cigarettes was launched in the Irish parliament today.
It won't surprise you to learn that one of the senators behind it is our old friend Professor John Crown.
I have written about Crown several times, as indeed has Chris Snowdon ("One of the most infantile displays I have seen since puberty").
Not everything Crown does turns to tobacco control gold. In 2012 his motion to prohibit smoking in the grounds of the Irish parliament failed (see The Senator Crown affair).
Perhaps this initiative will fail as well but don't expect a rational debate. See Tantrums and tobacco: the ugly face of public health.
Anyway, here's our response to the launch of the bill: Government must resist temptation to over-regulate electronic cigarettes, says Forest.
So far today our spokesman in Ireland, John Mallon, has appeared on TV3 and Today FM.
The Irish Times quoted John here: E-cigarette regulation proposed in new Bill.
UTV Ireland reported: E-cigarette bill proposed amid some opposition.
I like the reference to "some opposition". Sadly, apart from Forest I haven't heard anyone else speaking out.
If fighting the smoking ban taught us anything it's this: ignore what happens in Ireland at your peril.
Once legislation has been passed in Dublin there's every chance it will be introduced over here.
Btw, just in case you missed it, the Irish Times did indeed report:
The Bill would also provide for standardised packaging of e-cigarettes.
Vapers might like to mull over that threat and support our campaign against plain packaging of tobacco products.
Sticking your head in the sand is no longer an option.
PS. Speak to any advocate of e-cigs within the tobacco control community and you will be hard pressed to find one who doesn't support plain packaging of tobacco.
Just saying.
Reader Comments (4)
I fear this proposition is doomed to die at birth, fear, because if it had live long enough to be debated it would expose tobacco control for the over reaching monster it has become. Sadly all this bill will achieve is some attention for the impotent senators and plant the notion that vaping is dangerous in the mind of the public.
Proposed and defeated without a vote in the dail will be it's fate.
Regulating e-cigarettes and vaping is inevitable. The content of that regulation is the issue. Safety standards for batteries make sense for example. Standardizing plain packaging does not make sense for e-cigarettes just like it makes no sense for tobacco. In a fair, equitable world that considers all evidence this would be welcome. In a world dominated by tobacco control lies and healthiest zealotry fueled by profits from Pharma and government grants this is likely to turn into a quest for prohibition.
I suspect that you’re right, Tom, and vapers will breathe a sigh of relief that they have “escaped,” and will kid themselves that they’ve won the argument. But no argument with these prohibitionists is ever finished, unless it's won by them. They just keep on keeping on until they get their own way.
As all we real smokers know only too well, it’ll be a false dawn. We have had many, and vapers now will have the same. The crusaders will come swooping back again for another try, and another, and another, and another until, eventually, when they’ve battered every resistant politician into submission with ever-increasing horror stories about how “passive vaping” is killing all and sundry, and how it’s a “gateway to smoking tobacco” (long disproved, but that’s never stopped them in the past), and how the cheeldren are mimicking their parents’ smoking-type actions etc etc, all the erstwhile resistant politicians will suddenly declare that “the time is now right” a lá the turncoat Cameron and, hey-presto, plain packs for e-cigs. Job done. Vapers must be very careful not to underestimate the sheer tenacity of these people.
Just how do they propose to enforce plain packaging on vape products? These aren't products that all come in the same packages like tobacco and cigarettes, (cardboard boxes and plastic pouches), these are products that can come in any number of packaging methods, to no packaging at all. Very few are manufactured in the UK, and the they wont be able to force other countries to apply their silly packaging laws.
As for ejuice, are they going to require all bottles containing ejuice to be coloured poo brown? What about those vapers that make their own ejuice? How will they require other countries to conform, as most pre-mixed ejuice is manufactured elsewhere.
They may have some hope of making the tobacco companies comply, and have their "cigalikes" come in poo brown packaging covered with false warnings and photoshopped pictures, but these cigalike products are a tiny portion of the market, and one that is becoming the least popular.
Rather than trying to get vapers to fight the battle against tobacco plain packaging, maybe you should be focusing on getting smokers themselves to speak up. This law got passed in my country Australia, because smokers themselves didn't protest to any great extent, and in fact many smokers actually agreed with this silly law, as they have been brainwashed for decades into self hatred.