From page 7 of the Daily News 3rd Feb 2024:

Acting on instruction from the Dept of Making Life a Shit As Possible, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency today announced proposals to classify sex toys as medicinal devices. The move was outlined in document GTF-1984 – Removing The Very Last Vestige of Fun From the British Public.

According to the MHRA, there is overwhelming anecdotal supposition to back up their belief that popular devices such as the Rampant Rabbit and Lucious Lucy are medicinal devices. “Sexual intercourse between consenting adults carries with it the risk of a number of serious conditions including herpes, chlamydia and carpet burn. As sex toys can be used as an alternative to engaging in sexual relations with another person those risks could potentially be negated and so it stands to reason that they must be classed as therapeutic treatments and thus subject to our draconian regulatory oversight”.

According to a spokesperson at the Agency “the fact that there are no recorded instances of anyone ever actually coming to harm through using one of these devices is irrelevent. The undeniable fact is it might happen. Furthermore, children could easily be attracted to the bright colours and soft textures often used in their manufacture.”

The Agency has stressed that they are only making a proposal at this stage. “We have clearly listed three possible options for consideration and, whilst we’ve already decided which one we’re going with, we have given all interested parties until lunchtime on Wednesday to make their bleating and futile objections” annnounced Gruppenf�hrer Pharmashagger, the Agency’s chief executive.

When pressed on whether the tight timescales might lead to a serious disruption of supply, Gruppenf�hrer Pharmashagger responded “clearly there are tough challenges ahead. However, It’s well within the capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry to take this opportunity for yet more ridiculous profit. Obviously, they will have to work very hard to come up with products that satisfy our three mandatory requirements of being obscenely expensive, totally impractical and largely ineffective. However, it’s what they do best and we have every confidence they will respond positively to this challenge”.

GTF-1984 is the latest in a line of controversial initiatives by the Agency. It comes only months after the classification of chocolate as an antidepressant which might have caused a public outcry had it’s release not coincided with the quarter finals of X-Factor.

Original at http://ukvapers.com/topic/432-a-glimpse-of-the-future/

Response To BMA Briefing

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing in response to your publication entitled “E-cigarettes in public places and workplaces” of March 2012. I shall address each point in the order in which they appear in your briefing.

You begin by noting that “e-cigarettes are not regulated as a tobacco product or as a medicine in the UK”. Electronic cigarettes cannot be regulated as either tobacco products or medicinal products, since they are neither. Instead, they are regulated under the following legislative instruments as general consumer products:

• General Product Safety Regulations 2005, as amended by CHIP4, CLP and REACH in 2009.
• Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging for Supply) Regulations (CHIP) 2009
• Weights & Measures (Packaged Goods) Regulations 2006
• Plugs and Socket (Safety) Regulations 1994
• The Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Regulations 2006 (WEEE)
• The Batteries and Accumulators (Placing on the Market) Regulations 2008
• The Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009
• Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000
• Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002
• Data Protection Act 1998
• Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
• Control of Misleading Advertising Regulations (1998)
• Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations (2008)
• Advertising Standards Agency Code, the Enterprise Act (2002), and the Unfair Trading Regulations (2008)

These regulations are enforced by Trading Standards, the National Measurement Office and the Home Office, as well as the Advertising Standards Agency. The Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association, ECITA (EU) Ltd audits its members in the UK and elsewhere in Europe to this legal standard, and has extra requirements for excellent business practices. It would be entirely inaccurate to suggest that electronic cigarettes are unregulated.

You continue, by pointing out that “there is no peer-reviewed evidence that they are a safe and effective nicotine replacement therapy.” Nicotine Replacement Therapy products (NRT) are medicinal products, regulated as such by the MHRA (in the UK). As indicated above, electronic cigarettes are not medicinal products, and bear no resemblance to NRT. Therefore, it will be impossible to find any evidence of their safety and/or efficacy as nicotine replacement therapy. They are not designed as a ‘quit product’, nor are they sold as such by reputable vendors. Anyone selling an electronic cigarette with any claim relating to quitting smoking is breaking the law, since products sold with medicinal claims are legally required to have a Marketing Authorisation from the MHRA. Fortunately, the regulations which do apply to electronic cigarettes (as listed above) provide for the protection of public health and safety. As far as efficacy is concerned, this is not an issue with recreational products, since market forces dictate the success or failure of such products. If electronic cigarettes were not ‘effective’, people would not buy them. Since many millions of smokers have switched to using electronic cigarettes over the past few years, clearly they are providing consumers with what they want – which is part of the standard for recreational products.

You suggest that “the use of e-cigarettes may undermine smoking prevention and cessation by reinforcing the normalcy of cigarette use in public and workplaces”. Leaving aside the Orwellian behaviour of those who have successfully stigmatised smokers over many years, you offer no evidence to support your claim that using electronic cigarettes (or ‘vaping’) may undermine quitting. Is this because such evidence does not exist, or is it simply a concern that you have? In fact, there is no evidence that this is the case. Rather, there is a growing body of evidence that the use of electronic cigarettes actively supports reductions in smoking, since smokers who switch to using an electronic cigarette drastically reduce the amount they smoke, and often switch entirely. This means that they can dramatically reduce the harm caused to themselves and others, since they are no longer inhaling the by-products of combustion, which are well-known to be the most significant cause of the health risks associated with smoking. I urge you to fully consider the publication (and its references) “Electronic cigarettes as a harm reduction strategy for tobacco control: A step forward or a repeat of past mistakes”, published by the Harvard School of Public Health.[1]

It is very simple to ensure that there is no confusion between the legal use of electronic cigarettes in public and/or workplaces. The simplest solution would be for establishments which allow ‘vaping’ to display a notice to this effect. Then, if a smoker were to ask why someone appears to be smoking (if they have not read the notice), they can be directed to it. Smoking in enclosed public and workplaces is illegal, since the introduction of the Smoking Ban. Therefore, there could be no justification for a smoker to suggest that they could ‘light up’ in such a place, even if other people were using electronic cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes are not lit, and produce no smoke and are therefore not covered by the Smoking Ban.

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That is an exert from a letter to the BMA.  The whole thing can be found HERE

So far I have been building electric cigarette power units (sometimes called mods) just for myself, now I have received a request to start building bigger and better mains powered ones!

As a trial I built this one, to test the circuits and see how reliable it was.

Variable voltage mod - mains power!

As you can see, whilst it works it is not a thing of beauty.