According to a leaked memo highlighted in the tobacco analysis blog, and predicted in the past by this blog, the EU is likely to recommend a ban on electronic cigarettes shortly.

The EU plans to ban the marketing of all nicotine containing products which have not been approved as a medicine. This, of course, includes electronic cigarettes.

This is despite extensive research and scientific opinion that vapes are likely to be many, many times safer than cigarettes.

The EU will be well aware of this research after presentations made by the Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association (ECITA) in Brussels.

No Surprise from an Agency that Tippexes away the Truth

The ban will come as no surprise  to those who have followed the smokeless tobacco debate.

Like e-cigarettes, the safest forms of smokeless tobacco is far, far safer than smoking tobacco, and there is decades of evidence to prove the point.

And the EU has disgraced itself in its handling of the debate.

In its effort to ban smokeless debate despite scientific evidence that smokeless tobacco is safe, the EU allegedly rewrote a report on smokeless tobacco removing all positive comments.

When it became apparent that one positive comment had been removed, the agency was said to resort to tippexing (that's white out for you Americans!) the final positive comment. (Source: Clive Bates, former director of Action on Smoking and Health)

Update note: Fortunately, the EU ban was eventually defeated, thanks in large part to the thousands of vapers who wrote to their MEPs to explain how vaping had changed the life. Instead of a ban, we ended up with new vaping regulations - a compromise that at least allowed vaping to survive.