Wednesday 1 June 2016

New e-cigarette rules show just how undemocratic the EU is


In a nutshell the new vaping rules are an example of just how Brussels controls our lives. The EU creates regulations and the parliaments then have to enact legislation which brings the national laws into line with those regulations. In the UK, that is done by a statutory instrument, which is then rubber stamped by Holyrood if the matter is not reserved to Westminster. 

At no level are these regulations debated by any elected body, they are just passed into law, and our lives are then altered by them. It is a wonderful example of just how undemocratic the European Union is. In the case of vaping, they are supposed to mean that from now on we can only buy small bottles of vaping juice, with a limited amount of nicotine in them.

I gave up smoking about ten years ago when emphysema was diagnosed and  my lungs threatened to give up the ghost. A couple of years ago I started vaping, which seems to have had no effect on my limited ability to breath for good or ill. Even if it does, it is nobody's concern but mine.

The vaping shops are already telling their customers how the new rules will be circumvented - basically they will sell us our usual large bottles of liquid with no nicotine in them. They will also sell us an amount of nicotine which we can then ask to be added to the bottle of liquid that we have just purchased. 

This is all very rentier and sleazy. The tradition in the UK was to have a small number of regulations that were enforced, but now we live under a system of myriad regulations that everyone tries to circumvent.

The sooner the UK is out of the EU the better for all of us.

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