You can do something today to help protect e-cigs

Dear friend

The MEPs who sit on the European Parliament's environment and public health committee will have three e-cig choices before them when they vote this Wednesday afternoon.

To accept the European Commission proposals to require all manufacturers to have their e-cigs registered as medicinal products, very much to reduce their nicotine content, and to insist that all packaging carries large (and suspect) health warnings. This would be hugely damaging to the use and development of e-cigs.

To adopt the alternative proposal (compromise amendment 48) from the 'rapporteur', Labour MEP Linda McAvan, which also calls for e-cigs to be registered as medicinal products but seeks to do so with a lighter touch on the grounds that the use of nicotine is well established. Whatever the good intentions the requirement to comply with the Medicines Directive is bound to impose significant costs on manufacturers and restrictions on e-cigs, in some countries more than others.

To support instead compromise amendment 49 from my Belgian Liberal colleague Frédérique Ries that calls for e-cigs simply to comply with general product safety requirements. It specifically states that they should be available for sale outside pharmacies. This also has the support of the British Conservatives.

You know from personal experience all the arguments in favour of the availability of e-cigs. My view is very simple - we should not be introducing any measures that make it harder to obtain e-cigs than it is to obtain tobacco cigarettes.

I will be voting for amendment 49, trying to make sure that while e-cigs are safe, they don’t have to jump through any more hoops than necessary.

If you want to encourage other MEPs to do the same then why not ask them on Twitter or email the Environment Committee MEPs.

I’m not going to give you a form letter to send (your own words will be much more effective) but you can find a list of MEPs who sit on the committee here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/envi/members.html#menuzone

Best of luck getting the message on e-cigs out there and if you want to keep up to date with the campaign, you can visit my website at www.chrisdaviesmep.org.uk

Kind Regards

Chris Davies MEP