German Tobacco Control Demands Plain Packaging For E-Cigs It seems that, for the German Cancer Research Centre (motto: “From science, to politics”) the EU’s TPD has not gone far enough in dealing with e-cigs. Not by a long shot.
In this document, they set out exactly what measures they’d like to see instead … they being everything which currently applies to tobacco, and then some.
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| Click to enlarge for full wibbletasticness |
To summarise, they are demanding a total ban on advertising; e-cigs to be classed as tobacco products and taxed at the same level; a ban on all flavours except tobacco; use of e-cigs to be banned everywhere that smoking is; and plain packaging. Yes, plain packaging! (How’s that “domino theory is patently false” thang working out, Debs?).
Packaging of electronic inhalation products and liquids should be standardised in the following manner:
– Unicoloured packaging;
– Text only without graphic elements;
– White reverse for the indication of ingredients and warnings in black Helvetica script; minimum font size 9 points
– Same format and opening mechanism as medicine packaging
In order to avoid confusion with tobacco cigarettes and to prevent that products entice adolescents into tobacco consumption, a standardised form should be introduced for e-inhalation products. This form should clearly differ from cigarettes in shape and colour and should be as unattractive as possible to adolescents. Therefore, only grey or black should be permitted as colours for the products (obviously not familiar with the latest ‘science’ – DP).
Tobacco control being the one-trick pony that it is, naturally all of this atom-bomb-to-crush-peanut legislation is urgently required because, err, the children. The document takes a mere five minutes to read (and I do recommend you read it to understand how these truth-avoiding lunatics think) but mentions “adolescents” 30 times, “child” 25 times, “young” 13, and “youth” 9. Concepts such as common sense and basic sanity, on the other hand, are sadly conspicuous by their absence, as the section justifying a ban on e-cigs, err, everywhere shows quite clearly.
In order to ensure a preventive health protection, the population should be protected against any pollution in indoor air. This can be achieved through the application of smoke-free policies to electronic inhalation products. E-inhalation products should not be used in enclosed public places including, but not restricted to public buildings, educational institutions, health care facilities, cultural and leisure facilities, sports clubs, pubs, public transport as well as all other facilities in which children and adolescents are present. Moreover, the inclusion of e-inhalation products in Non-Smoking Acts simplifies the enforcement of the laws, as it is often not evident at first glance whether someone is smoking a cigarette or vaping an e-cigarette.
Strict Non-Smoking Acts without exceptions have a greater effect on smoking behaviour – particularly in young people – than policies with exceptions. This is because smokers crave for a cigarette when they see others smoking – they even feel an urge to smoke when they see people using electronic cigarettes. Therefore, the use of e-cigarettes may cause smokers to smoke more and provoke a relapse in ex-smokers. Thus the use of e-inhalation products in non-smoking areas undermines an important side-effect of the Non-Smoking Acts: the motivation to smoke less or to stop completely.
But then, one of the authors is Martina Pötschke-Langer, a vintage tobacco control moon-howler of the first water who “fights for laws” so – it won’t surprise you to know – has been working as adviser to the pharma-funded but unelected WHO since 1999, and who I’m pretty damn certain would have been front and centre during the totalitarian farce in Moscow earlier this month. She claims not to need ‘science’ to ban e-cigs because “we do not need a new nicotine product available on the market”, so was an obvious choice as “curator of the knowledge” by Linda McAvan when she was rigging the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive to drive through policies to kill off vaping for good.
Every day that the disgraceful assault on e-cigs by the tobacco control industry continues merely proves beyond doubt that it has never been about health. One day, politicians might start to notice instead of being manipulated and played by rancid self-enriching societal hooligans like Pötschke-Langer.
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Who are “German Tobacco Control”?. Some kind of gubmint gang, 3rd sector commissars, a division of T.H.R.U.S.H?
Most likely all of them Mr Ecks.
It is just more vile staism – power lust.
They know that E-Cigs do not cause cancer – they just want to give orders (order X, forbid Y) for the pleasure of giving orders.
Fortunately, Everything has a downside™. Therefore the anti-people do-gooder busybody control freaks can always find SOME reason not to do X, regardless of the minuteness of the damage that X might, in theory, do to some person somewhere on the globe. Or if not a person, then some other life-form. Or if not something living, then something harmful to the Great Gobi Desert or the Snows of Kilimanjaro.
As a matter of fact (I’m sure, because I read it on the Internet) e-cigs do contain the dread drug NICOTINE. Highly addictive! Worse than heroin!
Horsefeathers. Nicotine from real cigarettes is entirely out of your system within 72 hours — in fairness I know at least one person who says that’s also true of heroin, but the person is not a drug expert — and I never heard of a single ex-smoker who went through the kind of withdrawals that heroin addicts mostly (I think) do.
Anyway, by all accounts e-cigs don’t bother anybody except those who read Sin and Evil into their use. But as I say, everything has SOME down-side.
This is sort-of off-topic, only not: We are being taught (and have been going back at least 60 years; although I suspect that it’s endemic among humans, to a degree depending on the particular society and its particular culture) to be Afraid. We are teaching each other to be Afraid — that is, it’s becoming part of the general culture. This idea that humans are so fragile, the kids can’t play outside unless mom is there, people who put anything except food into their mouths are encouraging smoking which is Evil, people who put McD’s hamburgers into their mouths are eating “junk food” and therefore all sorts of poison, we have to have driverless cars because there are 35,000 traffic deaths per year in the U.S. — no kidding, this was trotted out by Eric Schmidt and what’s-his-name in the Glenn Beck interview of the two Google bigwigs. I read it last week and it made my hair stand on end: “We need to keep people safe” is close to the quote. Unfortunately when I searched for it a couple of days ago I couldn’t find it. I believe the original excerpts posted from the transcript at The Blaze have been edited since.
The point remains.
And for some reason I find that flow chart scary. Bland, faceless, technological, inhuman. Very Soviet.