Calgary Herald

Ban on menthol cigarettes leaves a bad taste in my mouth

Distractin­g from ultimate message regarding smoking of any cigarettes

- Rob Breakenrid­ge is the co- host of Kingkade & Breakenrid­ge on NewsTalk 770. rob. breakenrid­ge@corusent.com ROB BREAKENRID­GE

There’s no pending Michener Centre closure to cancel or airplane fleet to sell, but that doesn’t mean there’s no low- hanging fruit for the new NDP government to grab.

The previous Tory government had been pilloried for excluding menthol from its flavoured tobacco ban. The perception that it was in response to lobbying from the tobacco companies made it look even worse. Moreover, the concerns of smokers no longer matter much. For all those reasons, it was a no- brainer for the new NDP government to take action on this file.

And take action they did. Just days after being sworn in, Health Minister Sarah Hoffman announced that menthol would indeed become a prohibited tobacco flavouring as of Sept. 30.

If nothing else, it makes the regulation­s more consistent, since flavoured is defined as both having “a characteri­zing flavour” and being “represente­d as … flavoured.”

It was hard to see how that didn’t apply to menthol.

But if the original law was problemati­c, then its consistenc­y — or lack thereof — is irrelevant. As of now, it’s legal for adults to purchase unflavoure­d cigarettes ( of course, there are other ingredient­s in cigarettes which affect the taste of the tobacco), but will be illegal for those adults to purchase flavoured tobacco. Yet no argument has been advanced as to why those consenting adults should be denied that choice.

Let’s be clear: menthol- flavoured cigarettes are no more dangerous than other cigarettes on the market. In fact, a major study done by U. S. researcher­s in 2011 confirmed that menthol smokers are no more likely to develop lung cancer than non-menthol cigarette users.

In fact, the study found that smoking menthol cigarettes was associated with a lower rate of lung cancer and lung cancer deaths.

None of this is to suggest that menthol cigarettes are in any way healthier, but the authors noted that “undue emphasis on reduction of menthol relative to other cigarettes may distract from the ultimate health prevention message that smoking of any cigarettes is injurious to health.” Something to keep in mind.

However, as the government would have us believe, this is all about the children. The news release announcing the change boasted of how this will “reduce tobacco use among youth and help our children stay healthy” — laudable goals, to be sure, but is that a realistic expectatio­n?

Even among youth who do smoke, the vast majority do not use menthol cigarettes, and overall, the use of menthol cigarettes has been declining. The best available data we have comes via Health Canada’s Youth Smoking Survey.

The most recent data shows us that among teens who smoke, only 21 per cent use menthol cigarettes ( that number is said to be over 30 per cent in Alberta). That leaves almost 80 per cent of teen smokers in Canada smoking regular cigarettes, coupled with some wishful thinking that the rest will just kick the habit in the face of a ban.

Overall, though, we’ve seen significan­t declines in the number of Canadian youths who smoke or who have ever tried smoking. For example, 20 years ago, 45 per cent of teens reported having tried a cigarette — that number is now 13 per cent. We achieved this success without this ban, and perhaps we need to better understand why that is.

No doubt keeping tobacco out of the hands of youth is a crucial part of any tobacco reduction strategy. But of course tobacco — flavoured or otherwise — is, and long has been, illegal for youths to purchase. If we’ve now decided that this approach can no longer keep menthol cigarettes out of kids’ hands, doesn’t that apply to all tobacco products?

Alberta’s ban unfairly and unnecessar­ily infringes on the freedom of consenting adults. We don’t want kids smoking, just as we don’t want kids consuming alcohol or pornograph­y. The premise behind this ban puts us on a slippery slope.

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