‘Jeckyll And Hyde’ Vaping Bill Leaves Clean-up Job For Regulators

A Bill reported back to Parliament yesterday has the explicit purpose of switching smokers to vaping, but strange new clauses leave cigarettes more widely available than vapes and prevent people talking about the benefits of vaping

Imperial Brands spokesperson Kirsten Daggar-Nickson says, “It’s a ‘Jeckyll and Hyde’ Bill; it appears to be a world-leading progressive acknowledgement of the harm minimisation strategy of switching smokers to vaping but lashes out against vaping in bizarre ways.

“A harm reduction public health approach acknowledges that it’s better for smokers to switch to vaping. Public health experts said vaping products should be more attractive and available to smokers than cigarettes, and needless caution would mean smokers kept up their habit.

“The Bill looks like a progressive public health law, but it will act like a reactionary restriction on choice and access; preventing smokers from buying the products easily, and even dictating what people can say about vape products, to whom and where.

“The Bill needs to be straightened out in Parliament before it hands an impossible and legally uncertain job to regulators of instituting rules that contravene the law’s purpose.”

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