Is UK Electronic Cigarette Consultation a Sham?
A UK government body, the Medicines and Health products Health Regulatory Agency (MHRA), is holding a consultation on what to do with the electronic cigarette.
Yet according to a leaked Trading Standards letter a decision has already been made - before the end of the consultation!
The letter, which was written by a Trading Standards officer, Helen Wale of West Sussex, stated:
"The outcome will be that of a date (yet to be announced) there will be a 21 days period and then these products will be outright banned in the UK, unless the traders apply for certification as a medical device from the MHRA. This process could be costly and expensive so it is expected that many traders will cease trading."
Source: Leaked Trading Standards Email
When contacted, the MHRA admitted that the letter was genuine, but maintained the writer was mistaken and that a decision had not been taken.
Is this a genuine mistake, or is the MHRA ‘consultation’ a sham?
Disclaimer: The writer works for E Cigarette Direct, the UK distributor of the NJOY electronic cigarette.
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It's impossible not to be skeptical when it comes to "public health" groups and e-cigarettes, so if the consultation is a sham, it certainly wouldn't be surprising.
This is a quandary for them, though, since they can't very well justify banning e-cigarettes while leaving traditional cigarettes on the market. There's nothing in an e-cigarette that's not already in a traditional cigarette. There are, however, thousands of ingredients/chemicals/carcinogens in a traditional cigarette that are *not* in an e-cigarette.
What's more, since there's no combustion with an e-cigarette, there's no flame, no ash, no smoke, and no odor--so there's no threat or, for that matter, annoyance to bystanders.
In all the years e-cigarettes have been on the market, there's not been a single reported incident of a serious adverse effect.
In short, the MHRA has no legitimate reason for removing this obviously safer alternative from smokers. If they had a legitimate reason, I'm sure we'd have heard about it by now.
If they make the insane choice to ban e-cigarettes, I'd say it's time to take them to court and let them justify themselves before a judge, as well as before the court of public opinion.
The whole thing seems a bit of a shambles, actually. Until recently they hadn't even seen an e-cigarette, let alone tested - it was only when we sent one a couple of weeks ago that they had one themselves.
Then there was the meeting, when they told us there was a certain level at which nicotine would affect the metabolism of the body, and that if e-cigarettes were above this level they would need to be regulated as medicines.Unfortunately, they didn't know what the level this was.