BEAMSVILLE, Ontario, Aug. 17, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In just 3 days since Prime Minister Trudeau called the federal election, 300 Canadians have died from smoking related diseases and illnesses. The federal government has proposed restrictions on flavoured vape products, which Health Canada acknowledges will result in increased smoking. The justification for this is the misguided belief that flavour restrictions will lessen youth vaping rates.
Flavour restrictions have been proposed to curb youth usage as well as prevent harm and addiction, despite youth rates already being in decline. The Canadian Tobacco and Vaping Survey, 2020, found that youth vaping has declined since 2019. Currently, youth daily vaping is 4.7% and Health Canada expects the recently implemented nicotine ceiling will further reduce use and experimentation.
“Youth daily vaping and addiction rates are actually quite low and expected by tobacco control experts to continue to decline. Generally, youth vaping rates are discussed using data on the amount of youth that have tried vaping over the past 30 days. This is a poor metric to base regulation on because it represents experimentation and not habitual use. Young people that try vaping once at a party are included in this figure. These surveys are also misleading because they include age of majority respondents. If these respondents were excluded from the survey, daily vaping among minors is around 2%,” said Darryl Tempest, Executive Director of the CVA.
If other adult products were regulated consistently with the concern over past 30-day vape use, both cannabis and alcohol would require severe restrictions, as both daily and past 30-day use prevalence are greater than nicotine vaping. Alcohol is considerably more harmful than nicotine vaping and despite its use being significantly more prevalent than vaping among youth, flavour restrictions have not been considered. This is likely because like vaping, youth are not drinking for flavours.
Canada has set a goal to reduce tobacco use prevalence to 5% or less by 2035. Restricting flavours will push thousands of vapers back to smoking and jeopardize current smoking reduction targets. The CVA calls on Health Canada to forgo the flavour ban and instead focus on proven methods such as increased enforcement and education programs.
Darryl Tempest
Executive Director
dtempest@thecva.org
647-274-1867
