Possible Regulation of E-Cigs

Cigarettes are proven to be carcinogenic and smokers know the health risks they are facing. Cancer rates in smokers exceed those for non-smokers & are more severe. The tobacco industry is very wealthy and very powerful, with friends in government around the world.

Electronic Cigarette Smoking and Taxation

Our Politicians tell us how they make policy with our best interests in mind, while raising billions annually from the taxes on products that they know kill us. The government also raise billions annually from alcohol which is similarly harmful. Electronic cigarettes and vaporizers have received an amount of negative press recently.

The government earns billions from the 100,000 cigarette related deaths that happen annually, while at the same time introducing extensive health and safety legislation to reduce the 200 workplace deaths that happen in the UK each year.

If everyone stopped smoking, the government would have to raise £12.1 billion from other taxes to balance its books. Is it right that the government will only protect people if it is financially prudent to do so?

E-Cigarettes and Possible Regulation

As tax revenues fall as more and more smokers switch to electronic cigarettes, it will become necessary for the government to regulate and therefore be able to tax electronic cigarettes and e-liquid. In time, with regulation, the large companies that dominate the chemicals industry will take over the market.

Will this be in the public interest, and for the protection of smokers? If electronic cigarettes are regulated it will be done to enable the taxation of their use, under the guise of health protection.

Opponents to E-Cigarettes

The smoking cessation and the tobacco industries are both going to be affected financially by the continual increase in e-cigarette usage. E-cigarettes give the user a satisfying inhalation hit of nicotine unlike patches and gum. Despite not wanting to lose customers to electronic cigarettes, tobacco manufacturers aren’t in a position to argue against them on health grounds.

It is believed in some quarters that the tobacco companies are quietly supporting the smoking cessation industries campaign against e-cigarettes.

Likely Regulation of Electronic Cigarettes

How hard will the government really try to push healthier alternatives to smoking when it is s reliant on the income that tobacco duty provides? Because e-liquid is made up of easy to obtain ingredients, it will always be possible to make your own e-liquid, thereby negating any duty levied on regulated products.

Making your own “duty-free” e-liquid will no doubt be discouraged via scare stories in the press. The governments attitude towards “counterfeit” cigarettes is “Don’t smoke these dangerous cigarettes that are cheap, smoke more expensive ones that will still kill you!”

In the next few months we will discover what legislation will be past to regulate e-cigarettes. For e-cigarettes to be accepted by the government, it needs to be able to tax them, or the e-liquid that they use.

Being less harmful than tobacco will not be an important consideration if e-liquid can’t be successfully taxed because the devices will cost the government too much money to be allowed to continue to be sold. It is very probable that electronic smoking devices will be regulated to some degree in the near future. Tobacco duty receipts are set to steadily fall as more smokers switch to electronic devices.

It is logical to conclude that in the near future the government will be forced by the growing popularity of electronic cigarette devices to regulate them so that they can be taxed.