Dear Sir or Madam,
The European Parliament will soon vote on new rules for tobacco products. One part of the proposal, which has strong support from Labour MEPs, is to regulate electronic cigarettes as medicinal products. We, like many others including fellow Liberal MEPs and public health experts are genuinely concerned this would significantly restrict the availability of e-cigarettes, and we feel that would be a huge mistake.
We have been contacted by many E-cig users across Yorkshire who are worried that the products that have enabled them to stop smoking tobacco may become much more difficult or even impossible to buy. The last thing anyone should want is to risk pushing people back onto cigarettes. E-cigs, used by an estimated 1.3 million people across the UK, are widely recognised as being infinitely less harmful than tobacco.
That is why Lib Dem MEPs are pushing for electronic cigarettes to be as widely available to adults as tobacco, and are calling on other MEPs and constituents for their support so that this misguided proposal can be overturned. E-cigarettes should of course be regulated so that they comply with relevant safety and quality requirements, but making them more difficult to obtain than conventional cigarettes would be a backward step!
If you want more information on this issue, please email office@rebeccataylor.eu.
Yours,
Edward McMillan-Scott MEP Rebecca Taylor MEP