10.2. SR 09-08-2015 - Laserfiche WebLink

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18 4.3.4 Australia and Canada and other countries with de facto bans By defining these products as poisons or medicines, several jurisdictions have created an ostensible ban on e-cigarettes. As with all popular recreational drugs prohibition has led to a creative black market, which is likely to be reducing smoking and be beneficial to health. The force of the law has been used to ensure that cigarettes are widely available, while e-cigarettes are disadvantaged – a highly perverse approach to public health. It creates the appearance of toughness on the part of the regulator, but in practice it irresponsibly promotes an illegal and unregulated supply chain. 4.3.5 The World Health Organisation WHO has taken on an activist advocacy role and strayed into misrepresentation and miscommunication of the science and policy issues 62. The WHO’s favoured approach is to classify these products as both medicines and tobacco and to apply the restrictive measure of the WHO’s tobacco treaty (the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control)63. The WHO would also like to include these products in UN targets to reduce tobacco consumption by 30% by 2025 64 – making it impossible to achieve this target by denying the most likely way of meeting it. Fifty-three of the world’s top experts wrote to WHO in May 2014 to implore it to take a more constructive approach 65. 4.4 A better approach to regulation The aim should be to achieve a ‘sweet spot’ of regulatory intervention that builds confidence among consumers and removes cowboys and rogue products from the market, but does not impose costs, burdens and restrictions that crush the smaller players, radically change the products available and obstruct innovation. This relationship is illustrated conceptually in the graphic below. The optimum regulatory regime would strike a subtle balance between protecting users, non-users, bystanders and limiting the risks of harmful unintended consequences. 62 Bates C, WHO position on ENDS: A critique of the use of science and communication of risk, Oct 2014 [context][report] 63 See WHO position paper on ENDS, FCTC/COP/6/10 Rev.1 September 2014 [link] and Decision FCTC/COP6(9) from the Conference of the Parties to the FCFC, October 2014. [link] 64 See Clive Bates review of WHO documents: WHO plans e-cigarette offensive, 17 April 2014 [link] 65 Letter to Dr Margaret Chan, Director General WHO, Reducing the toll of death and disease from tobacco – tobacco harm reduction and the Framework Convention on kTobacco Control 26 May 2014 [context][letter]