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The United Kingdom-based electronic cigarette company Totally Wicked just won its first victory in the fight against the EU’s efforts to regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco products. The company has been given the okay to challenge the latest EU tobacco products directive in open court. While this is a long way from stopping the new rules from going into effect, it does mean that they have some legitimate arguments worth reviewing.

The EU’s tobacco products directive is set to go into effect in 2016 and would create significant problems for the electronic cigarette industry through the EU. In addition to forcing e-cig companies to jump through the same hoops as tobacco in order to sell their products, the directive will tightly control where the products can be sold and how they can be marketed. Although many are in favor of some kind of regulation, the fact remains that research is showing e-cigs to be 99% less harmful than smoking and so should not be subject to the same level of regulation.

Among other things, the directive would also place heavy restrictions on the amounts of nicotine that can be found in electronic cigarettes and might completely ban custom devices.

Hearings for the challenge are not likely to happen until sometime next year — moving at the same pace most regulatory progress is made. Even so, this could spark other countries looking into regulation to reconsider what they’re doing. Without evidence that electronic cigarettes actually pose any of the risks opponents like to suggest that they might pose, it may soon be impossible for countries to push through regulations at a national level without getting dragged into court first.

You can read more on the challenge here.