Why did B.C. remove plain packaging requirements for vaping products?
In November 2019, B.C. Minister of Health Adrian Dix announced dramatic steps to help children and youth avoid nicotine addiction and respiratory harm through vaping.
By July 2020, the government enacted regulations restricting the nicotine content, flavour, advertising and sale of vaping products in British Columbia.
Using an almost revolutionary strategy, the government also required plain packaging, with this statement, “WARNING: nicotine is highly addictive” and a mandatory skull and cross bones symbol. Child and youth health advocates were thrilled.
But on April 4, BC’s vaping regulations were quietly amended. Plain packaging and health warnings are no longer required. What happened?
Plain packaging is an important advance in nicotine addiction prevention. First adopted in tobacco products by Australia in 2011, plain packaging requires that products be sold in plain, uniform packages, without a company’s logo or trademark, and with company and producer information often in a standard font.
In 2019, the Canadian federal government created similar regulations for tobacco products.
In January 2020, the Canadian Council of Chief Medical Officers recommended that plain packaging of tobacco products be extended to vaping products by advising the federal government to “require plain and standardized packaging along with health risk warnings for all vaping products.”
Tobacco companies detest such requirements. Unable by law to advertise their products or to sponsor events, the companies can view the package itself as the last available territory to differentiate their product from competitor brands and to promote their product to new customers who might not yet be addicted to nicotine.
The package is important; it can powerfully communicate the ‘personality’ of a brand, just as designer cars, accessories and clothes communicate cues to status and character. Communicating to buyers through attractive words, pictures and decorations on a package is critical to sellers.
B.C.’s innovative decision requiring plain packaging of vaping products was not well received.
Within weeks of B.C.’s initial announcement, Imperial Tobacco had decried plain packaging as “sending an erroneous message to smokers.” when the goal was to prevent children and youth from becoming vapers, and then smokers.
Even though the regulations required the packaging to state “the manufacturer’s identity and principal place of business,” JUUL Labs comically claimed, “plain packaging poses a significant risk to public health by failing to provide consumers with ample evidence of which packaging is produced by reputable manufacturers.”
Nevertheless, B.C.’s plain packaging regulations did come into force on Aug. 11, 2020, and remained in force until April 4, 2022 when the regulations regarding plain packaging and health warnings were repealed. The government held no known media event. Gone are the plain packaging, the health warning statement and the scary skull and cross bones symbol. Those requirements just quietly disappeared. Why?
The Canadian Vaping Association claims to be “the original voice for the burgeoning Canadian vaping industry.” Its board members are vaping industry members, presumably profiting from vaping products. Without any evidence that Health Canada has approved vaping products as smoking cessation devices, its president claims, “We fight for Canadian adults’ right to an unparalleled harm reduction technology.” Indeed, if vaping products were such wonderfully reliable cessation devices then pharmacies would sell them; packaging would not be as important as a pharmacist recommendation.
The Canadian Vaping Association is listed as a lobbyist on the BC Lobbyists Registry where it vaguely describes its discussions with government: “topics may include flavours, nicotine concentrations, labelling and packaging, and taxation.”
Imperial Tobacco, which markets vaping products, has agents who are also registered as B.C. lobbyists. One agent reported intentions to meet with a public office holder to influence modifications to B.C.’s Tobacco and Vapour Products Control Act, with the avowed purpose of (among other things) “repealing a regulation.”
Canada is a signatory to the UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires signatories who pass restrictive legislation “to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.”
Contrary to industry myths, using vaping products can lead to cigarette smoking. Young people otherwise at low risk of smoking are now about 8.5 times more likely to become a cigarette smoker if they vape. Moreover, a 2018 U.S. National Academy of Sciences review found moderate evidence that vaping “increases the frequency and intensity” of subsequent cigarette smoking.
Why was an innovative aspect of B.C.’s important legislation — designed to protect children and youth from nicotine addiction quietly scrapped? Who did this? In whose interests? Who profited? Who will bear this decision’s consequences: pain and suffering. and increased health care costs?