Vapour UK

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.
kl.

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.

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    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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    ReplyDelete