Well, the EU have cocked it up again.

Over the last 6 months or so they've been working on the Tobacco Products directive and today they've been voting on the amendments (basically, finalising the Directive), before it's put in front of the MEPs who'll vote on whether or not it should be drafted into EU law in September.

The main items that they voted for today was to ensure that menthol cigarettes would be banned, as would "slim" cigarettes. Oh, and that ecigarettes would be deemed "medicinal" devices.

What, you might ask, is the problem with that? They help people to stop smoking, so doesn't that make them the same as patches and gum?

In short, No.

Ecigs aren't a quitting method. I don't wish to quit enjoying nicotine, and I never bought them, and don't use them, as a quitting method. They're an alternative to smoking, to burning tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke to get my nicotine fix. In this, they're excellent and I'm delighted that I finally have the smoking monkey off my back after 29 years. 29 years, I might add, through which the patches and gums were utterly useless.

Ok, you say, so what if they (the EU) force ecigarettes to be medicalised, isn't that a good thing? Aren't I just getting the same devices, with a degree of confidence in it's "efficacy"?

Again, No. I don't need convincing of their efficacy, because I know they work for my partner and I. We switched from smoking to ecigs 7 months ago absolutely painlessly. There're 1.3 million other people in the UK who feel the same way.

If a device like an ecig is medicalised (i.e. be given a license to show that it's a medicine) the producers of those devices will have to pay an absolute fortune to get their devices licensed. Don't believe me? Here're the (estimated) figures :

"The annual cost of a company that tries to keep up with innovation, and stocks the latest developments would have 4 new products a year, so would be expected to pay:

(4 x £252,000) + (4 x £65,000) = £1,268,000 (low estimate)

(4 x £390,000) + (4 x £249,000) = £2,556,000 (high estimate)"

That's just for the hardware. For eliquids, it looks like

"Then of course, there are the liquids to use in the hardware; most vendors have more than one flavour, and some have literally hundreds. Not only will a cost of between £87,000 and £266,000 per flavour, per strength, per year be a major disincentive to having flavours (and indeed having different nicotine levels), the MHRA has made clear that it views flavours as a potential problem, due to an evidence-free assertion that these only appeal to children. (After all, adults don’t have any interest in things that taste nice; everyone apparently eats bland food and drinks only water)."

What this means is that my dozens of different devices, which I can chop and change to find exactly the right mix for me, will almost certainly no longer exist. It'd simply be too expensive for the SMEs that currently make little drip tips, tanks, atomisers and battery MODs individually. The only companies that'd be able to get a license would be the companies who sell the cig-a-like devices that are sold as one unit. These are horrible for several reasons, not least because the batteries don't pump out a fraction of the power that a proper ecig battery does, and because the batteries simply don't last very long so they contribute to pollution when these batteries are thrown into the bin. Oh, and those lovely flavours like strawberry, and cherry and chocolate cake? You can forget them, it'll be tobacco flavour only.

Now, if you know me, you'll know that I have a good supply of ecig DIY liquids and hardware, enough to last me for a few years yet, so I'm alright Jack. It's the other millions of people who're currently smoking that I'm worried about. These are the millions who're much less likely to turn to ecigs because people like the MHRA say irresponsible things like "Our research has shown that existing electronic cigarettes and other nicotine containing products on the market are not good enough to meet this public health priority". That's utter, complete, cobblers! To date, in the UK alone there are 1.3 million regular ecig users, if ecigs didn't work as advertised do you really think they'd still be puffing away on their plastic fags?

As of the year 2000 there were estimated to be 1.2 billion smokers in the world. Imagine if half of those 1.2 billion people switched to vaping, something I believe entirely possible if the EU embraces e-cigarettes properly. I'm sure many other countries would soon follow suit and you'd quite likely have a chance of, instead of helping 24 million smokers to quit the hard way, to help 600 million quit the easy way.

The TPD's stated aim is to reduce smoking levels by 2%. JUST two percent! This is such a colossal expenditure for such a small gain. If vaping were properly encouraged by the EU, instead of controlled into obscurity, you have a chance to convert that paltry 2% to 50%, all at no cost to the public purse.