Crackdown on vaping includes tax tripling
VICTORIA B.C. has unveiled the toughest crackdown on e-cigarettes in Canada, with changes that will triple provincial taxes on vaping products, regulate certain flavours that target youth and lower nicotine levels to reduce the health risk.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the reforms come amid rising concern that vaping products, once thought to be primarily useful for weaning smokers off cigarettes, are instead being targeted to children and creating a whole new generation of nicotine addicts.
“In a short number of years, vaping has shifted from being a smoking cessation tool for adults to an addictions trap for our youth,” Dix said. “Large manufacturers have embraced this new technology and have used flavours and advertising to introduce a new generation to very high levels of a very addictive drug, to nicotine.
“This is the same technique, as we all know from our history, that tobacco manufacturers used in addicting new smokers decades ago. As a result, youth vaping rates are rising at an incredible rate.”
British studies have shown a 74 per cent increase in youth vaping in 2017.
In B.C., 21 per cent of teens between the ages of 12 and 19 had vaped in the last 30 days, compared with just seven per cent of B.C. youth that had smoked a cigarette during the same time, according to a 2018 B.C. Adolescent Health Survey. There have been three probable respiratory illnesses related to vaping in B.C. and several fatalities cited in the U.S.
E-cigarettes are battery-operated devices that usually contain nicotine-infused liquid, which is combined with vapour when the user inhales.
B.C. will introduce legislation next week to hit e-cigarettes and vape liquid with a 20 per cent provincial sales tax, up from the current seven per cent. For example, the new tax would boost the price of a Juul brand starter kit by $8, to $48.
“Yes it is a big tax jump and one that really signifies the urgency of this problem,” said Finance Minister Carole James. “We know that youth are particularly price-sensitive, so when you make a product more expensive and harder to access, use will decline.”
The vape tax will generate roughly $10 million a year in new revenue. A simultaneous increase to the tobacco tax is expected to add a further $25 million annually.
The changes stop short of a full ban on flavoured vape juice, which critics say is enticing youth to use the product and which several U.S. states like Michigan and Washington have already enacted.
While corner stores and gas stations can continue selling e-cigarettes and plain-flavoured juice, B.C. will allow only about 150 licensed adult vape shops to sell the flavours, said Dix. And he said he intends to completely ban flavours he feels target kids, such as blue raspberry, strawberry shortcake and root beer float.
“Any flavour that clearly attracts young people will not be allowed,” he said.
The new tax rate will come into effect Jan. 1, 2020, and the other changes April 1.
B.C. will also restrict the amount of nicotine in vape liquid to 20 milligrams per millilitre, and force plain packaging with health warnings on all vapour products.
“The taxes are a really smart idea,” said Dr. Christopher Carlsten, a professor at the University of B.C. who is the Canada Research Chair in Occupational and Environmental Lung Disease. “In the history of tobacco, taxes have been proven with good research to have been very effective.”
But current research isn’t as clear on whether e-cigarettes are as effective as claimed in helping people stop smoking, said Carlsten.
And there’s no research at all that backs up the need for flavoured juice, he said.
“I’m a little disappointed that the approach to flavourings wasn’t more aggressive,” said Carlsten. “If you step back and think about it, it was a relatively simpler issue to ban them entirely.”
Dix cited concerns that an outright ban would encourage black market purchases.
The changes will be accompanied by new education and youth marketing campaigns, a requirement for plain packaging and health warnings on vape products, and limits to public advertising of vape products.