Vapouround magazine ISSUE 21 | Page 44

FEATURE ASK WHAT WILL BREXIT MEAN FOR REGULATION, PROCESSES AND CROSS BORDER SALES IN THE UK AND ON THE BLOC? BY DAMIEN BOVE, CEO, ADACT MEDICAL Now the news is full of talk of Brexit and the UK’s exit from the European Union, there are a number of implications of this for the UK vape industry and it’s not all bad. Regardless of your political leaning on the topic, let’s have a look at some of the potential rules and business changes. WILL TPD STILL APPLY? Yes. TPD will still apply, but how it’s implemented will change. Despite the TPD being a European directive, it has been implemented into UK law, in statutory instrument 2016, No 507. So regardless of the outcome of Brexit it will still be a legally binding piece of legislation in the UK. There will be some changes to the legislation to cover for the fact that we are no longer part of the EU and hence have no access to the EU portal to upload product files and make notifications. The other interesting component is that the UK will also be free to make changes to the legislation as we feel we need to and recent parliamentary debates have indicated an appetite to make these changes. We will make the distinction between regulatory changes and process changes, changes to the rules versus changes to the way we comply with the rules. WHAT MIGHT CHANGE FROM A REGULATORY STANDPOINT, CHANGES TO THE RULES? Mark Pawsey, MP for Rugby stood up in parliament on January 7 and said the following. “There are three issues that are of concern to users in particular. The first is the cap on nicotine strength in vaping liquids. In many cases, it is too low to encourage heavy smokers to switch to e-cigarettes, which 44 | VM21