E-cigs create new generation of addicts

A half-century of progress in reducing tobacco use could go up in smoke unless governments get serious right now and take action to arrest and reverse the growing epidemic of young people vaping.

The e-cigarette boom among kids in high school and earlier is producing a whole new generation of nicotine addicts and a market of future smokers. Studies show that, at a minimum, one in five youthful e-cigarette users will graduate to old-fashioned combustible, carcinogenic smokes.

It should come as no surprise that the grubby pawprints of the big tobacco companies are all over this looming health disaster. Altria – the Marlboro man – is the majority owner of Juul, the e-cigarette market leader. Imperial Tobacco and JTIMacdonald are, respectively, behind the Vype and Logic brands of vaping products.

Big tobacco is the corporate grim reaper that spent decades denying – and buying pseudo-scientists to deny – the proven links between their products and a myriad of health issues, culminating in premature death among its users.

The World Health Organization called big tobacco’s disinformation campaigns “the most astonishing systematic corporate deceit of all time.”

That may be a just tad hyperbolic considering the astonishing systematic corporate deceit perpetrated by big oil to keep the profits flowing even when they know that their products were taking the world to the edge of catastrophe, where it teeters today. Big oil borrowed big tobacco’s devious playbook. But I digress.

This month representatives from the Canadian Cancer Society and the Nova Scotia Lung Association told the Nova Scotia legislature’s health committee that the prevalence of teen vaping is increasing at an alarming rate and, for reasons unexplained, e-cigarette use among young Nova Scotians is almost twice the national average.

Governments have been slow to respond to the risks ecigarette pose, possibly because they came on the market positioned either as a less-harmful alternative to smoking or as a smoking cessation tool.

E-cigarettes may well be less harmful than smoking, and neither the Lung Association nor the Cancer Society is calling for a ban on the products. They are advocating a suite of government interventions to reduce the use of e-cigarettes by young people.

British Columbia announced measures to do just that this week, including increasing the tax on vaping products from seven to 20 per cent, and reducing the allowable nicotine content in the liquid that produces the chemical cloud erroneously referred to as vapour.

The Cancer Society and the Lung Association support those measures and more. They propose increasing the minimum age to legally purchase vaping products to 21. It is currently 19 in Nova Scotia.

They also want a ban on flavoured vaping products. Flavours like cherry, peach, and tropical mango seem designed to appeal to young people. Research by SmokeFree Nova Scotia found that almost half of the underage e-cigarette users in Nova Scotia said they would quit if the product wasn’t flavoured.

The Cancer Society says sale of e-cigarettes should be restricted to licensed vape shops, internet sales should be banned, packaging that is clearly intended to entice young users should be regulated out of existence and, like cigarettes, advertising should be eliminated. E-cigarettes aren’t about harm reduction or smoking cessation when used by young people. They are the introduction to nicotine for most kids who use them, and a gateway to smoking for many.

Canadians are winning the battle against tobacco and reducing the massive toll it takes on the health and lives of Canadians. In the mid-1960s, more than half of Canadians aged 16 and over smoked. Today that number is just 15 per cent.

Organizations leading the charge – like the Cancer Society and the Lung Association, are working toward an “end game,” a smoke-free society. They hope to reduce smoking to just five per cent of the population by 2035.

Despite the progress, this year 45,000 Canadians will die prematurely as a direct result of smoking. And now, with ecigarettes, big tobacco it sinking its hooks into Canadian kids.

The big tobacco companies’ interests are not the health of young Nova Scotians or Canadians. For them, those kids represent a future market for their deadly products.

It’s past time and it’s imperative for governments to step up and protect kids from this predatory industry.