EU Votes in Favor of Keeping Tobacco

Cigarettes Legal and Getting E-Cigarettes

Banned – Is it Fair?

Did you hear the staggering news about electronic cigarettes? Indeed, it is

shocking because the European Union voted recently in favor of keeping

tobacco cigarettes as legal and banning electronic cigarettes from the

market. According to the EU, e-cigarettes are only a medicine and it is

important to ban it from being freely sold in the market. On the other

hand, EU voted in favor of tobacco cigarettes, authorizing its sale to be

legal. Let’s recapitulate what the European Union is up to:

Electronic cigarettes, which are considered to save millions of British

lives, will be regulated and restricted only as a medicine

The technology that essentially complies with medical standards

doesn’t yet exist and hence, e-cigarettes should be banned from

being freely sold in the market. On the contrary, one of the leading

e-cigarette manufacturing company has spent millions of pounds and

almost 2 years to comply with medical regulations

EU declares if an electronic cigarette can be manufactured that

complies with medical standards, it should be disposable with only a

single flavor. Manufacturing e-cigs with different flavors will require

a separate license for each, which can cost more than millions of

pounds and has to be renewed yearly

Standard tobacco cigarettes will be considered legal and will

continue to be freely sold across the country

What does this signify? Why would EU take such a step where millions of

British lives are in stake? It is quite prominent that earning huge revenues

from tobacco taxes is more lucrative and meaningful for the Union, be it

at the stake of millions of lives that fall prey to harmful tobacco cigarettes

every day. According to Professor John Britton, Chairman of Tobacco

Advisory Group of Royal College of Physicians, “If all the smokers in

Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-

cigarettes, we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive

today. It’s a massive potential public health prize.”

Despite of such recommendation and advice from the Union’s own legal

committee, which considers the plans to be illegal, the ban towards

electronic cigarettes has been initiated, while legalizing tobacco cigarettes.

This has called for massive disputes from across Europe, with millions of

people protesting against the loss of lives if such ban goes ahead.

Moreover, the EU’s legal committee has voted against such legislation

stating, “Ban on e-cigs is an unreasonable measure which is liable

to be annulled as being contrary to the principle of proportionality

and/or the principle of non-discrimination.”

This further signifies that such legislation is nothing but a powerful tool to

earn more revenues from sale of tobacco cigarettes and banning

electronic cigarettes, which was slowly yet steadily replacing the

market for former. Nevertheless, the fight continues…