Our statement on the invocation of Article 50

Vapers in Power is a single issue party. Our only concern is to protect the freedom of vapers to buy the products they need, and to use them without undue restriction. Where we can we’ll help out anyone else who’s fighting to restore our diminishing freedoms, but we do not, and will not, take a position on most political issues.

With that said, we welcome the Prime Minister’s invocation of Article 50. Once EU law is no longer supreme we hope the government will swiftly move to repeal the Tobacco and Related Products Act 2016, the British implementation of the EU TPD, and replace it with a new law which is actually fit for purpose.

Despite being called the Tobacco Products Directive, most of the substantive legislation contained in the TPD is directed at electronic cigarettes. Sadly, this legislation is nothing short of atrocious – overbearing, authoritarian, scientifically unjustified and rammed through by inept politicians and vested interests.

A large amount of research was presented to the EU during the TPD process, much of it conducted by eminent British scientists. For reasons of its own the EU chose to ignore this research, and instead to be guided by alarmism, ignorance and falsehoods. For many vapers who followed this law’s progress through the EU’s institutions it was their first experience of how the EU worked, and we know that many of them were persuaded to vote for Brexit as a result.

In future the laws of the United Kingdom should be developed by the Government of the United Kingdom, in the interests of the British people. Today we congratulate the Prime Minister on taking the first step towards this goal, and ask her to make the repeal of the TPD an objective as we move forward.

The Philosophy of Vaping 1

The Meaning of Life.

“Existence precedes essence” Sartre, 1946.

We are – before we decide how, to be.

I used to smoke, I happened to identify as a smoker. This, thanks to both the truths and untruths propagated by “Public” Health, entailed a set of beliefs about my life. I thought I was harming myself (mostly true), I thought I was harming others (possibly exaggerated) . This mixed the pleasure of smoking with feelings of self-disgust and guilt. Nonetheless, I continued, for many, many years. Untold tens of thousands of cigarettes. Each one a moment of pleasure and a tiny explosion of self-hate. Next time you see an anti-smoking ad campaign, you might like me, remember that although it had no effect on my smoking it did increase my guilt and lower my feelings of self-worth, tens of times a day. That’s helpful, “Public” Health.

Jump to now.

I vape.

The pleasure remains, the self-loathing is gone.

I am proudly a vaper. I exist and I am happy. I vape for the nicotine, I will not die from the tar.

So what has this got to do with the meaning of life? Well, I’m coming to that …

Life is (as Talk Talk sang) what you make it. Whatever meaning we find in our lives, we are free to decide. Those decisions enhance our lives and create new selves. I can now decide how to be.

There is an almighty battle happening across the world right now because “Public” Health are being called out and their “pharmaceutical” predispositions are being questioned. Millions, if not more, are discovering that vaping works. “Public” health, financed by pharmaceuticals and governments (two groups that will lose out if ecigs take hold), is worried. With so many of us discovering the truth, where is the public in “Public”?

It turns out that vapers are turning away from what they are told and turning towards what they do know, in, and of, themselves. The ever more strident lies of “Public” Health become ever more distant from our experience. We learn to distrust, we learn to critique, we learn to be.

The scales fall from our eyes – political systems are revealed as ways to keep those in power, in power. Power becomes identified with mere money. All from vaping.

I used to exist, now I am.

Vaping, and the bogus-powerful critiques of vaping, have realised an entire generation of ex-smokers.

We are awoken, we exist and we so proudly are.

Liam Bryan