UK.gov not quite done with e-cigs, announces launch of new inquiry The British government's Science and Technology Committee has launched an inquiry into the impact of e-cigarettes on health, along with regulations guiding their use, and the financial implications on business and the NHS. Committee chairman Norman Lamb MP said that almost three million people in the UK now use e-cigarettes ( …
Government sees massive source of duty slipping away and doesn't tally against the potential reduction in healthcare costs. Seeks to demonise new tech in order to justify duty beyond VAT.
No one is claiming E-Cigs are good for you, but they are less bad than ciggies
No you shouldn't be allowed to cloud a public interior space with your sickly sweet nicotine guff but I don't see any need to make your life worse than ciggy smokers.
I think they are being responsible.
There seems little doubt that there's a benefit in getting people off tobacco cigarettes onto vapourisers but the e-cig business has aims beyond helping current smokers and it is not clear that it's useful to create new generations of nicotine addicts and make smoking a socially acceptable habit again.
Failure to address these things in their infancy means any future problems are that much more difficult to unravel.
it is not clear that it's useful to create new generations of nicotine addicts and make smoking a socially acceptable habit again
Crikey, fancy loading your language a little more?
No, it is not useful to create new generations of nicotine addicts, but show one piece of evidence that that is what happening. Multiple studies have shown that vaping is not acting as an gateway to smoking; non smokers are not becoming vapers.
There is a strong anti vaping lobby, made up of "health" professionals and tobacco companies, whose tactic is exactly this: FUD. There have been many studies on vaping; all have concluded that vaping is (at least) orders of magnitudes safer than smoking, no long term negative effects have been found, and it does not act as a gateway drug. They equate vaping with smoking, despite no evidence, and then say "We just don't know the effects yet". Yes. Yes we do. You just don't accept it.
As for banning or restricting it? Good luck. Already banned high strength nicotine to satisfy tobacco companies (to no effect) so what do you want to ban next, batteries, glycerol, food flavourings, cotton or wire?
Multiple studies have shown that vaping is not acting as an gateway to smoking; non smokers are not becoming vapers.
No, but it's not hard to imagine that some businesses, if they can't get non-smokers into smoking, would be happy to have non-smokers getting into vaping as the next best thing. In fact there are plenty of adverts which present vaping as being a good lifestyle choice, are attempting to do exactly that.
I am someone who smoked and has found vaping to be the only thing which has kept the habit at bay so I'm not anti-vaping by any measure, would encourage every smoker to try that switch, in whole or at least partly.
I don't however believe anyone should be encouraged towards nicotine addiction, and I do support regulation which prevents all kinds of crap being put into e-liquids and tobacco alternatives.
The problem I have is with those trying to outlaw or overly regulate e-cigs with the intent to keep people smoking, for their own financial benefit, and those who would deny a safer form of nicotine use simply because it isn't entirely safe. Those are the worst kind of 'do-gooder' in my book.
I don't however believe anyone should be encouraged towards nicotine addiction
Thats the thing though - there isnt any definitive proof nicotine alone is addictive. In a cocktail of other carcinogens found in tobacco, yes. With just glycerin, we aren't sure.
That might be a more useful study...
Cigarette addiction is more that just nicotine - the inhale/exhale, hand to mouth movement, after eating habit etc - vaping satisfies all those without the cancerous chemical cocktail in traditional cigarettes.
"No, it is not useful to create new generations of nicotine addicts, but show one piece of evidence that that is what happening."
The whole point of this is that it is too early to say, hence being responsibly cautious.
"Multiple studies have shown that vaping is not acting as an gateway to smoking; non smokers are not becoming vapers."
Do you think that the companies who profit from vaping will be happy if that situation pertains forever?
There is a strong anti vaping lobby, made up of "health" professionals and tobacco companies
But vaping companies are behaving to the strictest of ethical standards and always putting the welfare of the population before any thought of profit?
And always will?
blu eCigs was bought by Lorillard Tobacco then Imperial Brands (formerly Imperial Tobacco), R.J. Reynolds Tobacco owns Vuse, I am sure there are more links between vape companies and tobacco and that these links will increase (it would be stupid of tobacco firms not to control this market).
So I don't think there's any harm in our regulators keeping an eye on this market and making sure that we don't allow the undoubted benefit of getting tobacco smokers to do something less harmful to be followed with unintended negative consequences in the future.
blu eCigs was bought by Lorillard Tobacco then Imperial Brands (formerly Imperial Tobacco), R.J. Reynolds Tobacco owns Vuse, I am sure there are more links between vape companies and tobacco and that these links will increase (it would be stupid of tobacco firms not to control this market).
So I don't think there's any harm in our regulators keeping an eye on this market
Ah, but despite their best attempts, the tobacco companies are massively failing to control the vape market. This is precisely why they lobbied for TPD, which placed large restrictions on vape devices (in order to limit their utility), vape liquid manufacture (to restrict it to larger entities) and sale (to restrict home mixing and just generally annoy every vaper)
>As for banning or restricting it? Good luck.
>Already banned high strength nicotine to satisfy tobacco companies
>(to no effect) so what do you want to ban next,
>batteries, glycerol, food flavourings, cotton or wire?
Interesting. No one mentioned banning.
It's not at all clear that this inquiry will be in any way negative for vaping, vapers, and vape product companies - it may well conclude that they need less regulation than they receive currently (this is certainly the Dept of Health position). Brexit will give us an opportunity to decouple these products from tobacco regulation.
At worst this looks like a waste of money that will just confirm what you say we already know - and by government standards not a particularly large or harmful waste at that.
QUOTE
>As for banning or restricting it? Good luck.
>Already banned high strength nicotine to satisfy tobacco companies
>(to no effect) so what do you want to ban next,
>batteries, glycerol, food flavourings, cotton or wire?
Interesting. No one mentioned banning.
UNQUOTE
On 19 May 2017 you could buy 100ml of 7.2% nicotine in the UK for £14.95.
Next day the TPD came into effect and the maximum strength nicotine you could buy was 1.8%.
10ml of it cost £4.25.
Buck-for-buck, that's an 11.371X price increase.
The cost of regulation.
Benefit to the consumer?
Nil.
Will Norman Lamb's committee recommend that that nonsense should be overturned?
"Buck-for-buck, that's an 11.371X price increase."
Still not a ban but definitely relevant as reducing cost is one of the main reasons people give for switching to e-cigarettes so avoiding pushing the price of that up anywhere near smoking tobacco is important.
TPD is EU regulation so I doubt this inquiry will feel particularly protective towards it although given that ASH and others don't view the regulation of nicotine concentration is particularly detrimental to vapers nor likely to dissuade potential new vapers, I wouldn't imagine any great pressure to move away from that.
"On 19 May 2017 you could buy 100ml of 7.2% nicotine in the UK for £14.95.
Next day the TPD came into effect and the maximum strength nicotine you could buy was 1.8%.
10ml of it cost £4.25."
I buy my nicotine at 72mg wholesale - 1L costs around £60 and will last me 3 years. The biggest issue is that it goes off which is why I put it into glass airtight jars and keep them in the freezer.
>No, it is not useful to create new generations of nicotine addicts, but show one piece of evidence that that is what happening. Multiple studies have shown that vaping is not acting as an gateway to smoking; non smokers are not becoming vapers.
I've seen plenty of young teenagers, including kids on the way to school with e-cig and corresponding thick clouds of smoke/steam. Ok, chances are these kids would have gone straight onto cigs 10 years ago, but they are/were non-smokers that have become vapers.
"There is a strong anti vaping lobby, made up of "health" professionals and tobacco companies, whose tactic is exactly this: FUD."
While the early vendors of eCigs were independents, I understand that old time tobacco companies are now getting into vaping tech big time. When one door closes another opens.
If that's the case I'd be be very suspicious of any claims of "harmlessness" coming from the vaping lobby. And as a gateway habit for teenagers leading to eventual cigarette use, I think that is entirely possible.
While the early vendors of eCigs were independents, I understand that old time tobacco companies are now getting into vaping tech big time. When one door closes another opens.
And as a gateway habit for teenagers leading to eventual cigarette use, I think that is entirely possible.
The problem is, that despite providing endless evidence and studies on this, this whole debate is still framed by what some random people "think may be possible".
Tobacco companies are trying/getting in to vaping big time. The way they are doing this is by attempting to destroy the current market with regulation and limitations - it makes them no money - and instead get people to use more cig-a-like devices with cartridges that they swap on a daily/more frequent basis, generating a daily profit for the tobacco company similar to that for a smoker.
So how do they do this? They spread FUD about vaping, they indirectly lobby for restrictions and limitations on the existing technology. Tobacco companies paying lobbyists paying for slanted research that is promoted to health officials.
They've already done this once with TPD, but no, lets have another round of slander, half truths, "we don't know" and "I think that is possible".
Sources, please?
It's complicated, as this Finnish study shows. Smokers cost more in healthcare per year, but they live significantly shorter lives and so healthcare costs are less than non smokers. However, because of the reduced lifespan, they contribute less to society.
"Government sees massive source of duty slipping away and doesn't tally against the potential reduction in healthcare costs. Seeks to demonise new tech in order to justify duty beyond VAT."
The Government, well several of it's MP's, received a lovely sum from the e-cig lobbyists a few years ago which resulted in the Government allowing e-cigarettes to be advertised as they were an aid to stopping smoking. Fair enough, but point out one advert that shows the benefits of e-cigs stopping smoking and I can show you 10 that promote it as a new way to smoke etc. Basically, anything but stopping smoking more like being a substitute for smoking.
"No one is claiming E-Cigs are good for you, but they are less bad than ciggies"
At the normal (I think it's normal?) 3.7v power that the original tests were conducted with, you're right. However more powerful vapes are on the market and their effects are less well documented. There are studies to suggest they're far more toxic than the 3.7v variants, which can impact health.
When you consider the above unknowns with the advertising as it is, it's only right that the Government look in to this as a duty to the public's health. Those of adults such as yourself and impressionable children who will start using these products based on them being "less bad than ciggies" end up on the more powerful vapes which could lead to health issues.
QUOTE
At the normal (I think it's normal?) 3.7v power that the original tests were conducted with ...
UNQUOTE
Not essential, but it's often useful to gather the facts before launching a polemic.
Voltage is not a measure of power.
We vapers tend to concentrate on resistance, measured in ohms, and not voltage.
Vaping is an example of exceptional, fast, competitive, technological innovation aimed at making money by satisfying demand. 63 years the child of the welfare state, the dynamism of an industry largely unfettered by regulation has been a joy to behold. It felt and still feels rather daring and fun to choose from among hundreds of tiny suppliers with no nanny there to help, just a bit of word of mouth, a limited high street presence of advisers/salesmen in shops and an avalanche of YouTube reviews and tutorials from all over the world.
The upshot is that we vapers choose the equipment and the liquids which taste best. This is revolutionary. In 45 years of smoking 40 Benson & Hedges a day, I never once said to myself "hmmm, this tastes good". With vaping, I judge by taste, for the first time, and I believe that other vapers do.
And what we find is that you get the best tastes by sub-ohming, i.e. using equipment with a resistance less than 1 ohm. That's just a fact.
We get more vapour/better taste by sub-ohming. We use more liquid as a result and we know to put less nicotine as a result. I was a very heavy smoker and I am a very heavy vaper. I am currently getting through about 12.71mg of nicotine a day. That's 64.70% down on the 36mg of nicotine I got from Benson & Hedges, since you ask.
And the 400mg of tar per day from Benson & Hedges? Down to zero. No tar in vaping.
The Royal College of Physicians estimate that vaping is about 5% as dangerous as smoking. The Department of Health recommend that vaping should not be covered by smoke-free legislation. The British Medical Journal report that high smoking cessation rates are correlated with increased vaping. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health report that young people who have never smoked do not tend to become habitual vapers.
All of which suggests that there's something there worth advertising.
You say: "The Government, well several of it's MP's, received a lovely sum from the e-cig lobbyists a few years ago which resulted in the Government allowing e-cigarettes to be advertised ...". How many is "several"? How much is "lovely"? How many is "a few"? Answers, please.
erm... but resistance isn't a measure of power either, or a measure of (heating) temperature, or anything else likely to affect the e(vape)oration. I can only use resistance as a proxy measure of something useful - the power dissipated in the heating resistor - if I also assume I know (eg) the voltage applied (where P = V^2/R) or current through (where P = I^2 R).
But if you mean power, why not use power? That would also work in comparisons with those using a different voltage source.
You know that W=vi and that v=iR and so do I.
You assume that at 3.7v you can crank up the wattage to 14 and get resistance down to 0.98 ohms.
Try it.
With some coils it'll work, with others it won't.
I don't care why.
You just have to buy coils rated for sub-ohm use or make your own.
That's the way the industry works.
In the main.
And I'm trying to point the debate onto the way things are, not the way they could be.
"The Department of Health recommend that vaping should not be covered by smoke-free legislation."
I was in a government building just the other day. Notice in reception. No Smoking or use of electronic cigarettes or similar in the building or grounds. Typical government joined up thinking LOL
"The upshot is that we vapers choose the equipment and the liquids which taste best. This is revolutionary. In 45 years of smoking 40 Benson & Hedges a day, I never once said to myself "hmmm, this tastes good". With vaping, I judge by taste, for the first time, and I believe that other vapers do."
This typifies the problem.
Vaping was intended to be a nicotine substitute to aid _withdrawal_, but it's now shown to be a pleasurable experience in its own right.
Whilst less harmful tha inhaling tars and other organic toxins, nicotine is still a harmful, addictive drug.
Perhaps vapes should be available with various reducing levels of nicotine, tailing down to zero, so that when withdrawal has been achieved, those like D Moss esq can carry on enjoying the taste, without ANY of the harmful side effects?
Yes, they both provide a means of consuming nicotine. Both are inhaled. But only cigarettes are smoked.
It's not mere pedantry. Smoke a cigarette and you get a shitload of noxious chemicals along with the nicotine. Use a vape and you get some harmless (or nearly so) glycerine and/or propylene glycol along with the nicotine. People who vape are still nicotine addicts (unless they're using nicotine-free fluids just for the visual effect), but they're not inhaling the products of combustion. As in "there's no smoke without fire."
As for more powerful vapes being more harmful, maybe. What matters is overheating the fluid, not how much vapour is produced. The more powerful models tend to have clever temperature control whereas the cheap ones have no control excep a timer and hope the heater doesn't get too hot.
Health service professionals do make a distinction between smoking and vaping because smoking is far more harmful. Nicotine addiction is not much worse than caffeine addiction, if at all. As the saying goes: people smoke for the nicotine and get killed by the tar.
So I don't see an issue with promoting vapes as an alternative to smoking rather than as a way of quitting nicotine completely. It's certainly more honest. Mechanisms of addiction mean that vapes and gum (which give alternating highs and lows) are a lot more addictive than the patch (which keeps nicotine level constant). If you want to quit nicotine then try the patch (it may or may not help). If you want a safer alternative to smoking then vape (which has helped some people to quit, but not many).
I know some heavy smokers who have cut their cig consumption massively by vaping (& though vaping is likely to cause health damage it is less than the fag equivalent damage, I'm guessing they have reduced the overall damage to their health considerably)
Let's hope the investigation acknowledges the use of vaping in reducing health damage of cig smokers.
Caveat I do not smoke cigs or vape and have no financial interest in vaping etc. Just know quite a few long term smokers, some of whom are seeing benefits from vaping in terms of less fags smoked (though plenty of tham still resolutely sticking to fags only as vaping was not for them).
.. also add that both fag smoke and vaping vapour has caused me to have coughing fits so not a fan of byproducts from either invading my airways so am in favour of same indoor bans for vaping as for fags.
US readers fag = cigarette
Why does nobody seem to understand the difference between what we call Government (the executive) and Parliament (the legislature)? This is a Parliamentary committee, not a government inquiry. The Merkins would get this, because they don't have our confusing mash-up of branches of government.
That is snake oil science.
Cause != effect.
Tenuous links suggest those that vape more go onto smoke. However these could very easily be simply down to the same demographic that would smoke anyway.
I think final results speak more clearly than guesswork.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431313-800-smoking-is-finally-dying-out-among-young-people-in-the-uk-and-us/
I do wonder if that is a just a disposable income problem. Everyone (except politicians and directors of large companies) are a bit worse off. So if you have to chose which form of recreation to put your limited funds into smoking is just further down the list than it used to be. Hash is probably cheaper than tobacco now.
Indeed! Haven't you ever noticed the correlation between the smoking ban and the normalisation of gambling by allowing wall-to-wall TV advertising and online casinos and the like? Of course, govt. gets quite a healthy tax from each bet, and it won't give the addict cancer... may destroy their lives, but at least the NHS won't have to pick up the tab.
Yup. They want our money. The treasury is the most powerful department, cos they have all the money. Reduce their money, and they have less power, which clearly, is intolerable to them. Changing the subject oh so slightly, the electric car. Currently very very little contributed to the Treasury from them, cos we are being encouraged to use them for environmental reasons. Wait until they become mainstream. The tax take from Road Tax and Petrol tax drops, and they'll be looking to gain that back. Watch as the tax on emission free motoring rises, and the environmental benefits get forgotten.....
Normalise vaping, get kids hooked, find a scientist who agrees they are bad for you (This bits easy as proved by WMD's in Iraq), ban vaping.
All those people now smoke cigs, happy tax days.
I could find a conspiracy theory in an empty room if I tried. Actually, the corners were put in to stop the rise of the round table back in 1155. There you go.
Fiction is much more fun than truth.
In my little town there are 4 vape shops all within sight of each other, they are each almost completely empty of both product and customers. I'm not sure what rent they have to pay, and I have no idea as to the cost of the product or the markup, but it doesn't seem economically viable as a business. Is it a front?
No, the margin on liquid is insane. You can make a batch of 5L of liquid for about £50, it will retail at about £5 for a 10ml bottle. Most shops won't mix their own liquids, but I imagine there is good margins for manufacturer and retailer. The hardware components are cheap and readily available from China, again at good margins. A friend at work likes buying new tanks (the non battery bit of a vape), he buys 10 from gearbest, sells 9 on ebay and makes a profit.
None of it requires very much storage space, and more and more people vape...
Its because Internet sales which by and large are running E-Cigarettes and Liquids totally unregulated to the TPD requirements by still selling to minors, still selling 72mg Nic and so on,
E-Cigarette sales needs to have the same control as cigarettes in order to make sure the rules are complied with, and be banned from the Internet.
So yeah basically big tobacco has no doubt reached into its pockets, made a few suggestions to lobbyists and then the government *Suddenly* wondering where all their fucking money went..
So sick of these useless C^%s. If they actually did their fucking jobs then this country wouldn't be as fucked as it is now.
1. It's not smoke
2. The amount of nicotine in the exhale is almost unmeasurable.
3. Nicotine even for the vaper inhaling it is no where near at a level where it can be even a slight risk of being a carcinogen.
4. The shite coming out of the exhaust in the car in front is probably at least 1000 times more dangerous to you than a little vape exhalation, especially if your air filters are that poor you can smell the flavourings.
5. A VW? Really? Have you any idea how much shite is coming out of the back of your car compared with the claimed figures? How many people have you harmed today by driving it? Just how much do you think your car "exhales" compared to a person smoking, never mind vaping?
The easiest way to satisfy the problems of potential gateway to smoking by younger people is to take all e-cigarette sales of liquids and other paraphernalia off the web.
As it is on the Internet by selling the products it is in effect advertising the products also.
You cannot buy cigarettes on-line and the idea of the Eu's TPD is to bring e-cigarettes in line with current tobacco legislation.
This is by far the easiest way to legislate and have retail outlets that are able to be monitored by Trading Standards.
Is that my chain smoking mother is down to ten ciggies a day, down from sixty, and her resting heart rate has gone from 100BPM to a far more acceptable 75. I don’t know what the risks of vaping are, but I can’t imagine them being remotely close to actual, tobacco based fags!
A VP where I worked (health insurance company) believed that smokers were a good thing for the company... they died early and relatively cheap (as far as insurance payouts for health care). OTOH, those who were obese cost the company a small fortune with diabetes, amputations, kidney failures, etc.
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