Weedless
Wednesday is an annual occasion to acknowledge the harms of tobacco industry
products and to commit to individual and societal action to reduce them.
With the
dissolution of Parliament clearly on the horizon, today is an occasion to reflect
on the failure of the federal government’s failure to ameliorate the problems
they caused when they adopted a free-market approach to vaping products in 2018.
Their
reforms invited cigarette companies to expand the nicotine market by selling
vaping products. The initial ‘light touch’ regulations adopted by the Trudeau
government imposed few conditions on the marketing or design of these devices.
It allowed these disreputable companies to reinvent their market and to recruit
new generations to nicotine addiction.
This
approach reversed decades of progress in protecting young people from
experimenting with and becoming addicted to nicotine. Canada has experienced no
overall change in rates of nicotine use since the
Trudeau government came to power in 2015.
The impact
of this federal policy was an immediate spike in youth vaping which continues
to persist. More than one in five Canadian youth are vaping by the time they leave high
school (with 13%
doing so daily), and by the time they are in their early twenties more than
one in four are using some form of nicotine.
At a
population level, liberalizing the vaping market did not result in more Canadians
quitting smoking. It did result in more young people using nicotine. Health Canada’s surveys show that
this change in policy resulted in a much greater increase in vaping
among non-smoking youth than it has among smokers trying to quit.
The
government was slow to apply brakes to the marketing or nicotine strength of
these products, and even slower to implement other measures it proposed to protect youth. Tobacco and
nicotine companies continue to lure young people with fun-flavours and gimmicky
designs and to allow promotions for these on websites and social media to which
young people have access.
Health
Canada officials have advanced regulations to restrict vape flavours, to require age-gating of vaping e-retailers and to curb the use of designs. These have lain dormant on Health Canada’s
regulatory plan or have been dropped altogether.
Abandoning
these reforms was a political choice. Flavour restrictions, for example, were initially drafted in 2021 but preparation of the final
version was delayed for over three years. It was scheduled for submission to
cabinet last May, but Minister Saks did not push it forward after she met with representatives of the vaping
industry in May.
Despite her October assurance that the measures would be finalized “as quickly as possible,” she has given no sign that
this will happen before the election.
Actions
taken by other federal ministers have also failed to protect youth. The federal
tax on vaping products was promised as a way to address youth vaping, but
failed to contain measures to prevent manufacturers from adjusting
their pricing and products to keep prices low. It now costs less than a
quarter to inhale a milligram of nicotine.
This government makes money on youth vaping. Last year federal revenues from vaping taxes had more than doubled to $485 million. Young
people, who make up 40% of the market, provided $200 million. The $75 million which
came from high-school aged children is more than twice as much as Health
Canada spent on all activities to reduce smoking or vaping.
The Trudeau
government’s vaping policies have already harmed a generation of Canadian kids.
Time is running out before this failure becomes their public health legacy.
