IEVA Slams Dutch Ban
The Independent European Vape Alliance slams the Dutch eliquid flavour ban
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by Dave Cross
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IEVA’s founding principle is to contribute to harm reduction and public health. It believes e-Cigarettes have a significant positive impact and should be recognised as a harm reduction tool because vaping is not smoking.
The organisation says around 65% of adult vapers in Europe use fruit or sweet liquids. The variety of flavours is one of the most important reasons for smokers to switch to e-cigarettes and for vapers not to go back to smoking. Without paying attention to this fact, the Dutch State Secretary Paul Blokhuis has announced to ban most of the e-cigarette flavours in the Netherlands, as they are supposedly attractive to young people.
IEVA says the move, “risks very negative consequences for Public Health and tobacco harm reduction: With only tobacco flavours left, vaper’s threshold to relapse on tobacco smoking dangerously lowers.”
The public consultation on the plan was to run to 19 January but has been extended due to overwhelming response. The vast majority of the comments so far come from vapers and scientists who reject the government's plan.
According to IEVA, the Dutch plan ignores important facts:
- The number of young people in the Netherlands who have ever tried e-cigarettes has decreased by a quarter in the past five years
- The number of Dutch teenagers who vape is very small. Only 0.2 percent of 14-16 olds vaped regularly in 2019
- 99,8 percent of all Dutch users of e-cigarettes come from smoking
Riccardo Polosa, Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Catania commented: “Removing flavours will not affect the rates of youth cigarette use. But, it will certainly reduce the number of options available for those adults who seek to quit smoking for good and find flavoured e-cigs effective.”
IEVA adds: “E-cigarettes offer smokers an alternative which is significantly less harmful than smoking, as emphasised by regulators such as the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands (RIVM), Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians. Public Health England concluded in a landmark review of the available evidence, that e-cigarettes represent at least 95% harm reduction versus conventional cigarettes.”
The Conference of the Parties to the WHO FCTC (COP9) will take place in November in The Hague, the Netherlands.
“Implementing the ban on flavourings could have negative effects on the conference. Rather, COP9 should pay attention to the topic of harm reduction through e-cigarettes, so that the number of smokers worldwide could be significantly reduced,” said Dustin Dahlmann, IEVA’s Chairman.
"Flavour is not a gateway to youth uptake of smoking. No evidence substantiates the association between vaping flavours and subsequent smoking initiation. We call on the Dutch government to drop this plan. There are no winners in a flavour ban, only losers.”
Related:
- The Independent European Vape Alliance – [link]
Photo Credit:
Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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