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I guess the question is how easily this thing can be studied for health effects. Ecigs look to be getting the kiss of death in the UK from the MHRA because of a

I guess the question is how easily this thing can be studied for health effects. Ecigs look to be getting the kiss of death in the UK from the MHRA because of a lack of long-term studies, the only people who tried to get their ecigs up to a consistent and studied standard beforehand ran out of money as far as I know, so I'm not particularly hopeful that this'll manage to avoid regulatory hurdles.

mistercow 13y ago
>Ecigs look to be getting the kiss of death in the UK from the MHRA because of a lack of long-term studies Doesn't look that way to me. It just looks like the MHRA has decided to regulate them.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Still looks like they're trying to give it the kiss of death to me. Relevant: http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/comms-ic/documents/websiteresources/con286852.pdf http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/comms-ic/documents/websit... Now, complying with regulation for medical devices is very expensive. Their high end estimate for the costs to a company that wanted to import _a_ product into the UK for sale sits at £266,000. A figure I consider to be rather optimistically low. And that assuming that '57. Our MA cost estimates assume that applicants would not have to conduct expensive animal and post-market-authorisation human clinical trials to satisfy MHRA that the risks to health from long term inhalation of ENDS vapour are acceptable. However, this may not be the case and MHRA assessors might ask for these additional trials. The one-off costs of conducting these additional trials would probably run into several hundreds of thousands of pounds. ' A lot of the strength of the e-cig market is in its diversity, you can get a lot of different flavours, and a lot of different devices to get the experience you want. Which this sort of thing would make very costly. And it's worth noting that the MHRA is fairly blatantly against diversity in flavours, it's even mentioned as one of the things they'd do in options 1. And all this in a paper that notes: 'The policy might only need to be marginally unsuccessful for it to be considered a costly failure. If the design and implementation of the policy has the effect of reducing access to NCPs (particularly ENDS) then it is possible that the number of successful quit attempts could decline. If there were no substantial countervailing health gains from improvements in safety, the policy’s overall impact could be highly negative.' If they push this through to the hilt, I rather suspect that we'll end up with just the big companies trading their crappy little fake-cigs. At this stage it's a matter of seeing how the EU breaks on the issue. With big tobacco attempting to kill off their competitors before they become large enough to defend themselves, BT being one of the few who can afford that sort of thing, I'm not hugely hopeful of that.
  - mistercow 13y ago
    Hmm, it seems you're right. They aren't saying they're going to outlaw it. They're just going to regulate it to death. I say "good luck". These things are rapidly approaching critical mass, and with tons of availability on the internet, all they're going to do is siphon the economic benefits into other countries.

mistercow 13y ago

>Ecigs look to be getting the kiss of death in the UK from the MHRA because of a lack of long-term studies Doesn't look that way to me. It just looks like the MHRA has decided to regulate them.

6d0debc071 13y ago
Still looks like they're trying to give it the kiss of death to me. Relevant: http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/comms-ic/documents/websiteresources/con286852.pdf http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/comms-ic/documents/websit... Now, complying with regulation for medical devices is very expensive. Their high end estimate for the costs to a company that wanted to import _a_ product into the UK for sale sits at £266,000. A figure I consider to be rather optimistically low. And that assuming that '57. Our MA cost estimates assume that applicants would not have to conduct expensive animal and post-market-authorisation human clinical trials to satisfy MHRA that the risks to health from long term inhalation of ENDS vapour are acceptable. However, this may not be the case and MHRA assessors might ask for these additional trials. The one-off costs of conducting these additional trials would probably run into several hundreds of thousands of pounds. ' A lot of the strength of the e-cig market is in its diversity, you can get a lot of different flavours, and a lot of different devices to get the experience you want. Which this sort of thing would make very costly. And it's worth noting that the MHRA is fairly blatantly against diversity in flavours, it's even mentioned as one of the things they'd do in options 1. And all this in a paper that notes: 'The policy might only need to be marginally unsuccessful for it to be considered a costly failure. If the design and implementation of the policy has the effect of reducing access to NCPs (particularly ENDS) then it is possible that the number of successful quit attempts could decline. If there were no substantial countervailing health gains from improvements in safety, the policy’s overall impact could be highly negative.' If they push this through to the hilt, I rather suspect that we'll end up with just the big companies trading their crappy little fake-cigs. At this stage it's a matter of seeing how the EU breaks on the issue. With big tobacco attempting to kill off their competitors before they become large enough to defend themselves, BT being one of the few who can afford that sort of thing, I'm not hugely hopeful of that.
- mistercow 13y ago
  Hmm, it seems you're right. They aren't saying they're going to outlaw it. They're just going to regulate it to death. I say "good luck". These things are rapidly approaching critical mass, and with tons of availability on the internet, all they're going to do is siphon the economic benefits into other countries.