I just want to say thanks.
Enjoy.
(COP6 is The World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and this year it is in Moscow, in October)
Letter to Dr Chan; Director of WHO; re: COP6 in October
22nd July, 2014
Dear Dr Chan,
As their representatives, we write to you on behalf of
European users of electronic cigarettes. We are unpaid, unfunded and
independent of any industry. As vapers ourselves, this letter is a frank
expression of our personal experiences and perspective.
We ask that the current situation, all the sound and
the fury surrounding electronic cigarettes, be considered from the
viewpoint of the millions of Europeans who have adopted them. The
unfettered access that we have enjoyed so far has been a fundamental
reason for their success. It has enabled us to transit from smoking
towards an infinitely less dangerous way of consuming nicotine. Some of
us have then decided also to stop using e-cigarettes. Others have
continued to use them, but without nicotine. Yet others, whilst having
completely substituted smoking with their use, prefer to continue
consuming nicotine but without the dangers associated with burnt
tobacco. And then there are those who have reduced their tobacco
consumption, with e-cigarettes filling the void left by unsmoked
conventional cigarettes.
Smoking is a complex phenomenon and there is no single
way to help smokers change their behaviour. Until recently, we had
little choice. Like most smokers, we found medicinal options, the gums,
patches and psychotropic substances as well as the behavioural support,
to be often unpleasant and certainly ineffective. The electronic
cigarette has allowed us to tailor its use to our individual tastes and
needs. If you were to constrain it so that it were available in a single
format that could only be used in a prescribed way, then at a stroke
you would make it as ineffective as the medicinal options have been over
the past 30 years.
Personal Vaporisers, e-cigs, electronic cigarettes or
whatever they are called, have given millions of smokers a choice and
control they never had before. The freedom to choose! That is what has
made the difference for us; the ability to take our time, to choose our
devices, to develop preferences for flavours. All of which we have paid
for from our own pockets and purses. Let us examine perhaps the most
controversial issue of all: flavours.
We are constantly being told that flavours exist only
to entice new consumers and especially the young towards smoking. They
excite so much fear amongst those who advise you! But listen to our
experience, to what we know and understand about these flavours that are
so important for us, the adults who use them. They have allowed us to
create a distance between the deadly habit we had and the far healthier
one we have adopted or are moving towards. It is the presence of
flavours, be they bubble-gum or vanilla, that makes the possibility of
returning to smoking so unlikely for those of us who have completely
adopted the product, because for most of us the taste of burnt tobacco
has become nauseous.
It is in the interest of public health that smoking be
eliminated from society and vapers are the example of how this can be
achieved. We are growing in number at a rate no-one predicted. The
reason is that the market is vast and exciting, encouraging the
development of products that are ever more effective. These more evolved
products do not, however, interest the tobacco industry’s subsidiaries. Their interest is almost entirely
limited to devices that resemble traditional cigarettes, products that
do not appear to deliver nicotine very effectively, that are expensive
to use and are not very appealing. Moreover, being essentially
disposable, they cause environmental damage by producing tons of
electrical waste.
Yet we find ourselves faced with a future where only
this part of the market, with its outdated, relatively inefficient and
expensive products, would be open to us. It would be akin to asking all
current smartphone users to throw away their high tech devices and rely
only on landlines. This simile applies just as well to the notion of
vapers returning to smoking.
We cannot emphasise enough the importance of this
revolution. The impact of what could be proposed at the COP6 meeting in
October would see its end. A revolution no-one dreamt of during all the
preceding decades of tobacco control. An unexpected revolution that all
costs must not be curtailed.
This letter comes to you from smokers, ex-smokers and
their families. We are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. We have
children and grandchildren. We have no vested interest, no one is paying
us and no one is coercing us. We write to you with our hearts on our
sleeves, with nothing to hide. We are the vapers of Europe and we ask
you listen to us to recognise that we are the way for you to reach your
goal. With little official involvement, we are changing the face of
smoking across Europe.
Please allow us to continue doing so. To do so through
snatched conversations in bars and cafés. Through quick chats on the
street with interested smokers who stop us to ask about our devices.
With the support of our families and friends who gratefully welcome the
ensuing health benefits and appreciate the absence of passive smoking.
Let us and the smokers willing to try e-cigarettes regain control of our
lives without unnecessary and costly intervention.
Science will eventually answer the questions that remain, but the only one that matters now is:
Are electronic cigarettes helping millions of smokers to turn to a much less dangerous practice?
The answer can only be;
Yes!
Please do not succumb to unjustified fear, otherwise
the WHO, by crushing this magnificent risk reduction opportunity, would
condemn millions to an early death.
Yours sincerely,
Hazel Mabe
European Vapers United Network
for and on behalf of the Independent Vapers’
Associations and Organisations of Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain,
Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Finland,
Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary.
