E-cigs and the TPD discussed in the House of Lords 07/03/16

Amazing Video only 7min long and was very encouraging for me to hear such positive views on vaping and not only nonsense and dribble being spoken about it:

 

Good to hear politicians with many common sense comments on the subject.

 

I didn't want to make a new thread for this so I put it here.

Big Pharma wrote EU anti-vaping diktat, claims Tory ex-MEP • The Register

 

Excellent post, Konvict which follows nicely the one above from V For Vaping/Vendetta,, good on the House Of Lords--here's one interesting quote-
"Lord Ridley is quite right to point out the somewhat murky role of various pharmaceutical interests in the production of the directive,” said Callanan. “When I asked questions in the commission and the council – it seemed to me self-evident that these devices were brilliant for reducing tobacco smoking, which I thought was what we all wanted – I asked why they were even in the directive in the first place, given that it is called a tobacco products directive and e-cigarettes are not tobacco products in any sense of the word. The answer I received many times was that this was argued for by the pharmaceutical industry, which would have an awful lot to lose if e-cigarettes supplanted or replaced nicotine patches and gum. I do not know the truth of that, but it seems that it was very successful in getting what it wanted.”

And another gem--the Lords have my respect on this matter, for sure, sensible dudes--

'Lord Hunt of King’s Heath, a former Labour Health minister and ex-President of the Royal Society for Public Health, went further in criticising our health bureaucrats.

Some elements in the public health world were prejudiced from the start against e-cigarettes. That clearly influenced the Department of Health and is the reason why it has taken such a mealy-mouthed approach to e-cigarettes, which is simply not based on evidence at all. It is interesting that, if you look at some of the papers produced by public health bodies, there are some weaselly words around this issue: “We still don’t know and we need to be very careful”. They are really trying to find a legitimisation for the initial very negative reaction, which I am afraid has laid the foundations for where we are today, because this is bonkers. It is simply madness. Here we have a product which is clearly of benefit to smokers and there is no evidence whatever that it will be used by non-smokers, which is where all this nonsense has come from.
Hunt said the very existence of the directive will reinforce the false impression, fuelled by the popular media, that “e-cigarettes are at least as harmful as tobacco”.

Hunt was one of several peers who called for the government to make clear to its regulator (the MHRA) that the UK’s implementation of TPD2 should be minimal.'

**Updated**

For anyone with too much time on their hands--the whole TPD Debate can be found here...
Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 - Hansard Online