TPD approved today: The battle is lost, but the war is not over yet

I'm sad to see that the EU Parliament today approved the revised Tobacco Products Directive, including the dreaded article 18 concerning e-cigarettes. You can read the press release here: http://goo.gl/5TYkGZ. This means that we from 2016 will see a lot of regulations that will make the e-cigarettes less appealing and not as effective as today: a maximum permitted nicotine concentration level of 20mg/ml, ban on advertising and labelling regulations, maximum 2ml tanks (that are required to be leak proof) and 10 ml bottles of e-liquid to name a few. All of these regulations that will work against the goal of improved public health and protect the current tobacco and NRT markets. I've written about the consequences of this over-regulating before, and now, sadly the may become a reality: Part 1, Part2, Part 3 and yesterdays post on advertising bans. Also be sure to check out Steve K's Vaping World, and his post on this today. Steve is right... it's a cold day in Europe.

We might have lost the battle, but the war is not over yet. Notice this text in the paragraph in the press release:

Can the rules on e-cigarettes be revisited at a later date?

Monitoring and reporting on all developments relating to e-cigarettes – including market and health related developments – has been built into the new Directive. The information collected will provide a good overview of what additional legislative action, if any, is required, and the Commission will revisit the issue if necessary.

So let's make sure they see that it is necessary to revisit the issue, shall we? The Ashtray Blog has a great post today on the matter as well as some suggestions on what to do to turn this around:

Illustration by the Ashtray Blog