It has to be asked… Is Linda McAvan MEP, European Parliament rapporteur for the Tobacco Products Directive, in an unholy alliance with the tobacco industry?
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I felt moved to write to MEPs… To: the ENVI committee rapporteur for the Tobacco Products Directive, Linda McAvan MEP CC: ENVI MEPs 7 May 2013 Dear Ms McAvan I wanted to make a few points about the draft tobacco products directive, your draft report and some of the points raised by you and other [...] Key votes in July and September – everything still to play for. We’re getting closer to serious position-taking and the first decisions in the European Parliament. So here is a post with my suggestions for amendments to the directive and some information for anyone interested in following what is going on in the process. [...] Dave Dorn of VapourTrails TV - an e-cigarette user and enthusiast – explains e-cigs and goes through some commonly held misconceptions. [...] Christian Engström, the Swedish Pirate Party MEP, makes the case for unbanning snus to the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) – also here on his blog. He is a shadow rapporteur to that committee, and they will provide an opinion to the Parliament on the European Commission’s proposal for the [...] …a couple of interesting pieces on e-cigarettes in The Economist magazine. No smoke. Why the fire? and E-cigarettes: Vape ’em if you got ’em What to make of this…? [...] It was painful to go through the European Commission’s attempt to justify the continuing ban on ‘snus’ (or ‘oral tobacco’ as it is known in Brussels). It’s hard to imagine a worse case of evidence being massaged into supporting a pre-determined policy conclusion – the conclusion is that beloved of bureaucrats everywhere: we were right [...] Letter to The Times, 14 March 2013 on how misguided excessive regulation threatens one of the most promising technologies for public health – the e-cigarette. [...] Q. What do e-cigarettes and garlic capsules have in common? A. Neither are medicines Would it actually be legal to classify e-cigarettes as medicines? A landmark legal case involving the classification of garlic capsules suggests the European Court of Justice would not accept this definition. Other recent legal cases in member states support that [...] A response to the UK Balance of Competences Review… Should the EU impose a blanket ban on oral tobacco (other than in Sweden, which is allowed an exception)? Why not allow each member state to decide? If a member state wants to take a robust evidence-based approach to tobacco harm eduction by allowing low [...] Sweden is a stunning outlier in European Union smoking rates – and the benefits are lower death rates from tobacco-related disease – now and locked in to the future Spreadsheet data, charts and sources and look at this too. [...] European Parliament: heading for an own goal? On Monday 25th February 2013, the European Parliament committee that is scrutinising the proposed EU Tobacco Products Directive holds a public hearing, and take evidence from invited witnesses. The committee is the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (known as ENVI). This post provides links to [...] Over regulating the alternatives is a form of protection for the most harmful and dominant form of nicotine delivery – cigarettes E-cigarettes represent an amazing market-based, user-driven public health insurgency. From nowhere to €500m in Europe, the market is growing rapidly and already almost equals the market for NRT, according to the European Commission’s consultants [...] The European Commission has published a draft directive on tobacco products. Unfortunately it bans and obstructs much lower-risk alternative to cigarettes, such as smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes, so its effect would to protect cigarettes and harm health. However, it is not too late to do something about it. [...] On 30 November, the draft EU Tobacco Products Directive was circulated for inter-service consultation (ie. sent round all other Directorates General in the European Commission). Its contents are not yet public, but it is widely thought to maintain the ban on snus and to impose strict restrictions or even bans on reduced risk non-combustible tobacco [...] Campaigning by so-called health groups to ban much less hazardous alternatives to smoking is dangerous, unethical, lazy with facts and utterly without regard for the people they are supposedly trying to help – see my detailed post Death by regulation. But they go to a whole new level of awfulness – evil maybe – when [...] Is it right to ban certain types of smokeless tobacco from sale in the European Union? The short and unequivocal answer is ’no’. But surely banning any type of tobacco can only reduce the size of the overall tobacco market and therefore be good for health? No, not at all, it just isn’t that simple… [...] Way past bedtime on 17th December 2005, frazzled European leaders decided how to spend just under one trillion Euro. They set the EU’s budget framework from 2007 to 2013 – and committed €947 billion or just over 1% of EU GDP over the period. The chart shows the breakdown of the 2007 budget by [...] Am I alone in finding the phoney war over the EU treaty unbelievably annoying? I feel as though I’m caught in the midst of an Olympic synchronised lying event, where just about everyone is saying the opposite of what they think for reasons different to those they give. The government doesn’t want a [...]
I lifted the box above from the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper that has to be clear, concise and to the point in its communications or its busy and clever readers buy the Financial Times instead. If only the European Commission could choose where it gets its scientific [...] The Guardian exploded with indignation this week [Revealed: cover up plan on energy target; leader; letters], at the discovery of a leaked government memo discussing how the UK might wriggle out of a European Union renewables target – to reach 20% of EU energy consumption from renewables by 2020. In fact, the real [...] Just looking at the text of the EU Council Presidency Conclusions from 9 March. The bit about renewables is to the left with some scrawl from me. I’ve already argued that this is a mad way to do policy [Renewables - why is the EU involved?] – it would be more sensible just to set [...] The European Union has been busy setting out ambitious ideas for energy and climate policy – see Energy for a Changing World, and the climate change and energy announcements made in January. But is it trying to do too much of the wrong thing in trying to determine member states’ approach to renewables? I think [...] In many ways the IPCC 4th Assessment Report (known by aficionados as ‘AR4′) from the physical science working group confirms much we had already taken to be established beyond reasonable doubt (see summary). A huge impulse (greenhouse gas increases) is being applied to a complex physical system (atmosphere, oceans and carbon cycle) and modellers are [...] Terrific pamphlet by Tom Burke and Nick Mabey of E3G. Their Europe in the World publication is a vision for Europe painted on the broadest possible canvas – an inspiring call for Europe to cast off its paralysing anxieties and face the globalising world with confidence and purpose. This is about defining a European mission [...] A couple of interesting reports on R&D… firstly the DTI’s R&D Scoreboard 2006, where clearly more is better – at least one assumes that’s the purpose of creating lists and league tables ordered by the sums spent (see chart from the report showing the world’s biggest R&D spenders). Note the big spenders are not necessarily [...] I’m always taken aback by the truly lovely food you can find anywhere in France. It is just routine, part of the fabric and goes right across all forms of food – like the stunning ham sandwich I had earlier. How much of this is down to the CAP, which is so aggressively defended [...] Obviously anyone would be annoyed by the ludicrous wine lake thing (below). So duly inspired, I decided to set out a vision for Commmon Agricultural Policy reform – based on devolution, sustainable development and sound economics. Rather than do it here, I thought it would be interesting to post it on David Miliband’s blog, as [...] A surreal return to the public eye for the European Wine Lake [Guardian article]. I presumed this had gone in the 1980s along with that other great icon of European progress, the Butter Mountain. Amazingly, the EU subsidies for wine production in 2005 were €1269 million, of which €791m went to measures to prop up [...] A visit to Wales reminded me how bad the EU budget can be. Everyone knows the EU spends a fortune on agriculture, but there are also large expenditures on ‘structural funds’. These are monies that the EU pays for social or infrastructure investment in poor areas… sounds good? But it isn’t… The trouble is UK [...] |
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