European Union Votes in Favor of Keeping Tobacco Cigarettes Legal and Getting E-Cigarettes Banned – Is it Fair?

Did you hear the staggering news about electronic cigarettes? Indeed, it is shocking because the European Union voted recently in favor of keeping tobacco cigarettes as legal and banning electronic cigarettes from the market. According to the EU, e-cigarettes are only a medicine and it is important to ban it from being freely sold in the market. On the other hand, EU voted in favor of tobacco cigarettes, authorizing its sale to be legal. Let’s recapitulate what the European Union is up to:

*  Electronic cigarettes, which are considered to save millions of British lives, will be regulated and restricted only as a medicine

*  The technology that essentially complies with medical standards doesn’t yet exist and hence, e-cigarettes should be banned from being freely sold in the market. On the contrary, one of the leading e-cigarette manufacturing company has spent millions of pounds and almost 2 years to comply with medical regulations

*  EU declares if an electronic cigarette can be manufactured that complies with medical standards, it should be disposable with only a single flavor. Manufacturing e-cigs with different flavors will require a separate license for each, which can cost more than millions of pounds and has to be renewed yearly

*  Standard tobacco cigarettes will be considered legal and will continue to be freely sold across the country

What does this signify? Why would EU take such a step where millions of British lives are in stake? It is quite prominent that earning huge revenues from tobacco taxes is more lucrative and meaningful for the Union, be it at the stake of millions of lives that fall prey to harmful tobacco cigarettes every day. According to Professor John Britton, Chairman of Tobacco Advisory Group of Royal College of Physicians, “If all the smokers in Britain stopped smoking cigarettes and started smoking e-cigarettes, we would save 5 million deaths in people who are alive today. It’s a massive potential public health prize.”

Despite of such recommendation and advice from the Union’s own legal committee, which considers the plans to be illegal, the ban towards electronic cigarettes has been initiated, while legalizing tobacco cigarettes. This has called for massive disputes from across Europe, with millions of people protesting against the loss of lives if such ban goes ahead. Moreover, the EU’s legal committee has voted against such legislation stating, “Ban on e-cigs is an unreasonable measure which is liable to be annulled as being contrary to the principle of proportionality and/or the principle of non-discrimination.”

This further signifies that such legislation is nothing but a powerful tool to earn more revenues from sale of tobacco cigarettes and banning electronic cigarettes, which was slowly yet steadily replacing the market for former. Nevertheless, the fight continues…