Alberta’s attempt to protect youth from vaping falls far short

The government of Alberta finally proposed legislation regulating vaping last week. But its Bill 19 mainly protects industry, and not children and youth.

As the last Canadian province to regulate vaping, Alberta now makes minimal proposals: restricting advertising and vaping locations and requiring vendors to demand identification from customers who look younger than 25 years. This bill bans sales to minors, something already done by the federal government.

The Alberta government should have made vaping products less dangerous.

If the province were serious about protecting child and youth health, it would have reduced nicotine maximum levels from 60 mg/ml to 20 mg/ml, as Nova Scotia and the European Union have done, and as British Columbia proposes to do.

It would have banned all flavours but tobacco, as Nova Scotia has done.

Moreover, the Alberta government should have: (1) raised the minimum vaping age to 21; (2) licensed vendors; (3) implemented strict enforcements, causing vendors to lose their licence for unlawful sales; and (4) created health programs to help children and youth overcome their nicotine addictions.

Bill 19 currently protects the vaping industry, giving industry much of what it wanted. Last fall, most industry representatives told the Alberta government that it opposed a cap on nicotine — including Juul, and that it opposed flavour bans, including Imperial Tobacco and Imperial Brands, sellers of flavoured vaping products.

The industry will now be popping champagne corks: no Alberta nicotine cap, no flavour ban.

The Alberta health minister told journalists, “Our public health folks are going to continue to monitor the various ways there might be adverse effects on the health of adults.”

But we know that vaping is harmful. It is harmful to the mouth, to the lungs and can lead to COPD. We know that high nicotine levels addict youth rapidly; and that flavours entice young people to vape and confuse them about whether vaping is safe. There is little scientific evidence that vaping helps adults stop smoking.

When politicians leave office, some find well-paying tobacco and vaping-related work. Former federal Conservative cabinet minister Rona Ambrose recently joined Juul’s board. Would annoying the tobacco and vaping industry be bad for our elected officials’ future prospects?

Putting the tobacco and vaping industry’s interests first is unlawful. Canada signed the WHO’S Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that requires governments to protect their tobacco control polices “from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”

The Alberta government must work for us, not for the tobacco and vaping industry, or for politicians’ own future careers.

Canadians do not want their children and youth to be addicted to nicotine. They have said so. And frankly, with the low price of landlocked oil and the economic harms of COVID-19, our province cannot afford a new generation of nicotine addicts costing the health-care system billions of dollars before Albertans suffocate, unable to breathe.

Bill 19 is a start. We call on all elected members of the Alberta legislature, please, to do the opposite of what the tobacco and vaping industry wants: (1) to restrict nicotine concentrations to 20 mg/ml; (2) to ban all vaping flavours but tobacco; (3) to raise the minimum vaping age to 21; (4) to license and strictly control vaping vendors; and (5) to create health programs to help children and youth overcome their nicotine addictions.

Alberta’s children and youth are counting on our elected provincial officials for protection. This could still be the current Alberta government’s finest hour.

Juliet Guichon, Devin Aggrawal, Emily Downey and Eddy Lang are members of SAAVE, Stop Addicting Adolescents to Vaping and E-cigarettes.

The industry will now be popping champagne corks: no Alberta nicotine cap, no flavour ban.