Icelandic MPs Filtering Out Emails About Vaping

Members of Iceland’s Parliament have received so many emails objecting to proposed vaping regulations that they have started to filter them out, one MP reports.

As reported, there are currently no regulations in Iceland regarding vaping, and a new bill re-introduced to Parliament aims to not only ban vaping from everywhere cigarette smoking is forbidden (i.e. cafés, restaurants and pubs); it also aims to tax vaping like cigarettes, and to issue an advertisement ban.

The bill in its previous form received concerted criticism, and that appears to be the case with this new version, as Vísir reports that members of Parliament have been inundated with emails objecting to the bill.

These emails, a short message that warns MPs that the sender will not vote for any party that votes in favour of passing the bill, almost all bear the same text. Helgi Hrafn Gunnarsson, an MP for the Pirate Party, has complained on Facebook that MPs cannot perform their duties for all the emails they have received on the matter, and as such have begun spam filtering any email containing the words “vape” and “veip”.

Further, Helgi laments that this exercise in direct democracy is misguided, as the spam filter will likely also prevent emails containing factual and important information about vaping from being read by legislators.

The rise of vaping in Iceland has also been attributed to the sharp decline in smoking that has happened in Iceland in the past few years, resulting in a 50% decrease in cigarette sales between 2008 and 2017.

When the bill will be voted on still remains to be seen.