At Prime Minister’s questions (PMQs), David Cameron reaffirmed the Government’s position on vaping, stating that it was necessary to ‘differentiate between smoking and vaping’, despite a Brussels’ law being imposed on the UK that will effectively treat e-cigarettes the same as tobacco.
Anne Main pressed the Prime Minister, asking ‘why are we bringing in the Brussels diktat that says we must include vaping in the tobacco directive?’
In his response, the Prime Minister stated that ‘it is necessary to differentiate between smoking and vaping, because they have very different health effects. I actually think that that is what is being achieved’.
Speaking after PMQs, the St Albans MP said, ‘it is clear to everyone who has looked at this directive that e-cigarettes will be treated the same way as cigarettes.
‘It is idiotic beyond belief that Brussels would insist upon this. We know from our own Royal College of Physicians (RCP) that smoking is the biggest avoidable cause of death and disability, and social inequality in health, in the country. Why on earth would we bring in legislation that would make it far less likely that smokers would move onto e-cigarettes – which Public Health England has said is 95% less harmful? The tobacco directive should come with a health warning itself.
‘We have political and medical consensus. Ministers at the health department, PHE, the RCP and our own prime minister support these harm reduction products, yet we are meekly going along with this disastrous directive because our parliament is powerless to act. This is Brussels at its best.’
Watch: Anne Main, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh, talks about the Rohingya crisis and urges support for @DECappeal pic.twitter.com/FFL0lq8O0A
— DFID (@DFID_UK) October 12, 2017