TPD split vote WAS allowed by the EU Parlament

MEP Nikki Sinclair

According to MEP Nikki Sinclair a split vote on the TPD was actually allowed by the EU Parliament yesterday, but it was of course then to late. Nikki posted a video on Youtube (http://goo.gl/UDDBSZ) saying that at 10.49 yesterday morning the Parliament had allowed a split vote. But this was just 41 minutes before the vote and on that short notice no lobbying could be done and no information could be given so the vote of course went against us.

This is just another example of the political skullduggery that is going on in the EU Parliament. As Nikki says, the e-cigarettes was put into the TPD "with a spoonful of sugar". The TPD has a lot of useful regulations for example to stop children smoking, which of course is something we all want. So putting the e-cigarette legislation in there is just a way of getting it approved, even though most MEPs (from what I understand) was against it, by piggybacking it to regulations that the most MEPs would vote in favour of. A split vote would have countered this effect. It has been argued for such a split vote for months now, but president Martin Schultz wouldn't listen... until 41 minutes before the vote, way to late for it to become a reality. And Schultz of course knew that, so this is, like I said before just political skullduggery and it shows how the EU Parliament is ignoring the principles of democracy. And the result this time can be that the markets of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma is protected and millions of lives that could have been saved won't be, because the technology that could have ended the Tobacco plague is slowed down substantially. Why they do this, one can only guess... corruption, loss of taxes or just lack of common sense are reasons that comes to mind. We do know that Big Tobacco and Big Pharma is benefiting from this, so it's not very hard to imagine that their shady lobbying tactics have played a great part in this. But one thing is for sure, their reasons are not what they want us all to believe; that they do this to protect public health.

But as I said yesterday: The war is not over. There is no reason for vapers to give up. Remember, most of us don't fight this fight for their own sake, we have already made the switch, and the TPD won't stop us from vaping. But we are fighting for all the smokers that haven't made the switch yet, and for reasonable regulations that will enable them to do this. I believe that if we keep the scientific evidence coming, grow in numbers and continue to work with MEPs and media we will win in the end.