Tuesday, 18 February 2014

The consequences of over-regulating, Part 3: A survey among vapers

The first time I wrote about the consequences of over-regulating (http://goo.gl/QTyuJJ) I said I think a lot would revert to smoking, but that most would try to continue and that we'll get a black market, a market lot less safe than a properly regulated one. This was based on common sense, and later on supported by the experiences Finland have had with the ban of snus that I wrote about in the second part (http://goo.gl/vRjzhs). Now my fellow blogger James Dunworth, who runs the Ashtray Blog, has done a survey asking over 1600 vapers some questions about what they would do in case of a EU E-cig ban, and why they think the EU would want a ban. Read his blogpost about the survey here: http://goo.gl/5QiDS7. The results of the survey is presented in the infographic below.

7 Consequences of an EU Ecig ban
Infographic by http://www.ecigarettedirect.co.uk/ashtray-blog
These numbers gives us a pretty clear picture of what would be the consequences of an EU e-cig ban for the current vapers in the UK: A shorter life for a lot of them, and basically criminalization of the rest. The fact that 88% (!) believes the EU wants to protect tobacco tax revenues and just 3.1% believe they to it for the right reason, to protect public health is in my opinion just sad... most of all cause I think they are right. But as I wrote about yesterday, not all countries are dependent on the tobacco tax, but I fear most politicians believe they are.
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4 comments :

  1. Anonymous18 February 2014 at 23:02

    You are following wrong money. It is Big Pharma who is loosing lot's of money if growth of the e-cig sales continues. The sales of the NRT products are just a dip in the ocean in Big P's pocket but the real money lost comes from sales of cancer medicines.

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    Replies
    1. Morten Moe19 February 2014 at 08:01

      You're absolutely right jariollikka. However I do think the 88% are right in that parts of the EU parliament is trying to protect Tobacco tax revenues as well, they just don't know any better. And as you can see 51% also believe corruption is one of the reasons, and I think that is where Big Pharma comes in. I also think that what you are saying is why big pharma has been reluctant to go into the e-cig market. Cause if the NRT products were the reason, they might as well just adapt and go into the market themselves, they definitely got the resources.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous19 February 2014 at 11:12

      In Italy the state has lost about 455 M€ tax money in 8 months of last year and therefore they issued ~58% sin tax for e-cigs. They have admitted that e-cigs are the reason descending tax money from tobacco products. One Italian MEP even filed a written question to the EU comision about it's actions to tax e-cigs http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/questions/ecrites/2013/004672/P7_QE(2013)004672_EN.doc

      On 17.2.2014 The Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/health/article4007244.ece) leaked a letter from GlaxoSmithKline where GSK insists that e-cigs should be regulated as medicines because otherwise e-cigs will “seriously disadvantage proven nicotine replacement therapy products”. About 80% of Big Pharma's revenue comes from medicines for tobacco related diseases.

      See also Christopher Snowdon's blog http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/big-pharma-and-little-e-cigarettes.html

      Delete
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