The morning of meetings and round tables sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Development dedicated to the sector of electronic cigarettes, with guests and institutional speakers and representatives of the main Italian (united in ANAFE-Confindustria) and foreign (the multinational Fontem Ventures) manufacturing companies.
At the opening, the introduction by Lorenzo Castellani, Scientific Director of the Luigi Einaudi Foundation, underlined: “The invisible hand of the free market has created a new product, that of the electronic cigarette, much appreciated by consumers. Unfortunately the Italian governments, instead of understanding and regulating the phenomenon, have preferred to apply a excessively heavy and unfair taxation which penalized the sector. It is appropriate to regulate the market in such a way as not to penalize producers, protect consumers and allow this new sector to grow and prosper."
The first intervention was by the Honorable Ignazio Abrignani who announced the birth of theParliamentary Intergroup e-cig. “Today we formalize the birth of an absolutely bipartisan and transversal Parliamentary Intergroup, which, by signing a shared manifesto, will take action to create a bill, a text, to be proposed to the government. The goal is to standardize, relaunch and develop a sector that can do business without harming health. It is much better for a smoker to approach the e-cigarette than to continue smoking classic cigarettes. If in doing so it also helps the development of businesses, here we are before a process that needs to be helped. In everyone's interest."
The Hon. Sebastiano Barbanti, the Hon. Anna Cinzia Bonfrisco and Valerio Forconi, Head of Institutional Relations of the multinational Fontem Ventures (owned by Imperial Tobacco) who declared: "Both in Italy and internationally we are witnessing a huge contradiction regarding the regulation of electronic cigarettes: on the one hand we have some institutions that try to hinder the development of this sector (remember the WHO which wants to impose a ban on states, and the EU which has recently adopted an extremely penalizing), on the other hand, the ever-increasing consensus on the part of scientific and health bodies who see enormous potential in terms of public health in electronic cigarettes. And in the meantime in Italy the tax system in force has proven to be ineffective and unsustainable first of all because it is based on the unjustified equation between electronic cigarettes, without tobacco, and tobacco products”. "We have the opportunity to propose something sensible by taxing only the nicotine content" added Umberto Roccatti, Vice President of Anafe-Confindustria "At present we are only penalizing Italian companies that represent quality excellence worldwide".
Protagonists of the second table “E-cigarette and health: an opportunity for public health” they were Dr. Rosa Draisci (ISS), Dr. Emanuele Ferri (University of Milan Bicocca), Prof. Riccardo Polosa (Unicatania and LIAF). After Dr. Draisci's speech, who reaffirmed the importance of product control and quality, which is better guaranteed by the new notification obligations imposed by the European Directive which came into force on 20 May last, prof. Riccardo Polosa focused on the scientific evidence that is demonstrating that the electronic cigarette is an opportunity for public health that must be seized: "I hope that in Italy it will be understood as soon as possible that when we speak of the risk due to the use of cigarettes electronics, one must remember the difference between relative risk and absolute risk. The risk of electronics is relative to that of the blonde. And considering 100 that of blondes, which as we know are lethal, that of electronics is at 4".
Finally, the protagonists of the last table: "New rules at the dawn of Directive 2014/40: impacts and open questions" were the Hon. Mario Sberna (PI), the Hon. Gianluca Susta (PD), Massimiliano Mancini, President of Anafe-Confindustria and Duccio Fabiani (Miticom Consortium).
Mancini, closing the works, said: “All the operators in the sector ask to have a legal and regulatory situation that gives them the conditions to continue working. Not everyone happens to be able to contribute to the creation and development of a new and revolutionary product, we have had this fortune and this is also why we work in the direction of quality and continuous improvement. From the very beginning, Italian companies have represented excellence and have raised numerous standards. We operated despite the lack of rules we have been asking for for a long time. Now we have this European directive which, however, still has too many unresolved points and does not envisage single European standards that would instead allow us to plan the future and the development of a sector that can still grow a lot".
