Tuesday 10 February 2015

Challenging the Tobacco Products Directive


Totally Wicked, the British e-cigarette company, is challenging the EU's Tobacco Products Directive's regulation of e-cigarettes. 

I use a pretty standard second generation e-cigarette which will banned for various reasons, all of them stupid. It has a tank capacity of more than 2 ml. It's refillable. The bottles of fluid I buy are larger than 10 ml. I vape a fairly obscure fluid which will be almost certainly taken off the market because it won't make financial sense to keep it on. I tend to vape 20mg/ml of nicotine, which puts me at the very limit of what will be permissable, but it won't be enough for many people.

In short, the TPD bans e-cigarettes that people like—the ones which work. It's bad news for liberty and bad news for health. Totally Wicked is challenging it on the basis that "the TPD represents a disproportionate impediment to the free movement of goods and the free provisions of services, places electronic cigarettes at an unjustified competitive disadvantage to tobacco products, fails to comply with the general EU principle of equality, and breaches the fundamental rights of electronic cigarette manufacturers and users."

I wish them well. Find out more here.

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