Should Electronic Cigarettes be Regulated in the UK?
Should Electronic Cigarettes be Regulated?
Everyone knows the damage that smoking causes our health and that if you smoke, it is highly likely to shorten your life. Cancer rates in smokers exceed those for non smokers & are more severe. Recent articles in the press and online have been becoming increasingly vocal about the potential dangers of electronic cigarettes.The tobacco industry is very wealthy and very powerful, with friends in government around the world.
If our Politicians real do have our best interests at heart, why do they continue to allow a proven ‘deadly’ product to be sold to us. Why not protect us from ourselves if smoking is real such a scourge on society? Governments across the world are not supporting the electronic cigarette user like they could be.
In the UK we have a Government that is prepared to risk strangling industry with health and safety red tape in order to mitigate a small risk to workers, while at the same time ignoring the 100,000 annual deaths that are caused by smoking. In 2011/12, the Governments tax revenue from tobacco was £12.1 Billion. Whichever way you slice it, that’s a lot of money that would have to be found from somewhere else if smoking was banned. The conclusion you might draw from this is that 100,000 deaths per year is acceptable if you are earning £12.1 Billion from it.
There is a growing clamour for regulation of electronic cigarettes. This would presumably be to protect us from the dangers of vaping (have you heard of anyone dying from e-cigarette use?…. no, neither have we).It is the smoking cessation industry that seems to be behind the majority of the anti e-cigarette press and publicity. The tobacco companies have remained quite quiet on the subject to date. It’s difficult to argue that a new product might not be 100% healthy when you are selling a product that is proven to kill people!
The Government will at some point in the future look to regulate electronic cigarettes or to ban them if it can’t effectively find a way to tax them. That is unfortunately the way of things with Politicians.
In the coming months we will find out what the extent of future regulation for e-cigarettes will look like. If the Government can find a way to tax e-juice then apart from reducing the cost savings, electronic cigarettes are here to stay. If they can’t see an effective means to tax them however it is highly likely that they will be banned on spurious health grounds.
If the Government can’t find a way to successfully tax electronic cigarettes and more importantly vaporizers, then it will be forced to ban them in order to protect it’s current tobacco tax revenue streams. The idea of losing a large portion of the £12.1 Billion in tobacco tax will not be tolerated for long.
Switch to a ‘safer’ form of smoking with a high quality vaporizer.