Covering note

CONSULTATION ON ELECTRONIC CIGARETTES AND STRENGTHENING TOBACCO CONTROL IN SCOTLAND

Responding to this consultation paper

We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by 2 January 2015.

Please send your response with the completed Respondent Information Form (see "Handling your Response" below) to:

Tobaccocontrolteam@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Or;

Tobacco Control Policy Team

3E, St Andrew's House

Scottish Government

Regent Road

EDINBURGH

EH1 3DG

If you have any queries contact the Tobacco Policy Team on 0131 244 4387.

We would be grateful if you could clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to as this will aid our analysis of the responses received.

This consultation, and all other Scottish Government consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations.

The Scottish Government has an email alert system for consultations, http://register.scotland.gov.uk . This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). It complements, but in no way replaces SG distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SG consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government are subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

As a party to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( FCTC ), Scotland has an obligation to protect the development of public health policy from the vested interests of the tobacco industry. To meet this obligation, we ask all respondents to disclose whether they have any direct or indirect links to, or receive funding from, the tobacco industry. We will still carefully consider all consultation responses from the tobacco industry and from those with links to the tobacco industry and include them in the published summary of consultation responses.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library (see the attached Respondent Information Form). These will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library and on the Scottish Government consultation web pages by the end of 2014. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SG Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on the questions contained in the consultation. We aim to issue a response to this consultation by March 2015.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to the contact details above.