Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Snus saga: An unfortunate illustration of the TPD proposal fiasco

...For instance, the 2008 report concluded that while complete tobacco abstinence is best, pragmatically, “substitution of snus for smoking may be beneficial to individual and public health”. Instead, the Commission simplistically concluded that snus is not 100% safe and should thus be banned. The report also found snus use in Sweden is not a significant predictor of future smoking. Yet the proposal justifies a ban based on the unsupported hypothesis that snus is a gateway to smoking. Read more...

I snipped this particular section out of the middle of the article. Why? Because all the regulators are using the same argument to arrive to their conclusions, sickening actually. Another nice tidbit follows...

According the the DG’s analysis, a “vast majority” wanted to see the ban lifted, EU-wide,” and “several respondents were concerned that the Commission’s approach was too simplistic and overstated”. Commenters pointed to the scientific evidence that showed that “smokeless products were much healthier alternatives to smoking”.

Yet, instead of taking into account the overwhelming response, the DG delegitimised public opposition, painting comments as the result of citizen “mobilisation campaigns” organised by tobacconists. You’ve got to ask yourself: if pro-ban activists had been effective at encouraging the opposite response, and in such strong numbers, would the DG have treated that exercise in democracy as dismissively?

No comments:

Post a Comment