B.C.’s new strategy to deny smokers choice CDC Finds Cannabis-Related Chemical of Concern in U.S. Vaping Illnesses

On November 21 the CDC announced that vitamin E acetate was found in all 29 patient samples analyzed. Vitamin E acetate is an additive used to thicken THC vape products. Legal nicotine vapes available in Canada never contain vitamin E acetate.

Time for Canada to see the logic. Vaping is not without risk, but vaping is not smoking. In the UK, Public Health England promotes vaping as 95 per cent less harmful than smoking. In Canada, federal laws prohibit vapes from making this kind of direct comparison between smoking and vaping, leading to confusion.

Imagine this: an innovative new product comes along; for a sizeable population of adults, the Canadian government says, it offers the potential to “reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals.” Instead of allowing this product to be widely available, the government goes out of its way to make sure it is less appealing and harder to find. They increase taxes on this product to make it more expensive. And they impose regulations so that it can’t quite do what it was intended to do.

It is a hard scenario to picture, right? We may not agree with everything our governments do on our behalf, but generally we know they are well intentioned. It’s why wearing seatbelts is now mandatory and why we have vehicle emission standards and speed limits.

With vaping, however, the B.C. government has chosen a different approach. They want to ban the sale of flavoured vaping products in convenience stores. With most smokers buying their cigarettes at convenience stores, this will result in fewer smokers trying vaping. B.C. also wants to limit the amount of nicotine in vapes, without any evidence that nicotine concentration is causing a problem and potentially making vape products a less acceptable alternative for adult smokers. And they want to increase the price by adding extra taxes.

At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that vaping is considered by Health Canada to be less harmful than smoking, and by Public Health England at least 95 per cent less harmful. So it is time to really ask: what is contributing to underage vaping and what steps can we take to stop it without making it harder for adult smokers to choose vaping?

The B.C government tells us this is about keeping youth from accessing these products. This is a good objective and one we wholeheartedly support. Youth should never vape, and adults who don’t smoke shouldn’t vape either. But these proposed rules won’t do anything to curb youth vaping. They will only make it less likely that adult smokers will choose vaping as a potentially less harmful alternative. And that’s a frustratingly far cry from evidence-based policy.

First, according to Government of Canada data collected in 2016 - 2017, youth who do vape, or have tried vaping, are primarily acquiring their vapes through “social sources.” This includes older siblings or friends, and greymarket retailers – not through normal retail channels.

Why, then, is B.C. singling out corner stores? In routine audits, neighbourhood stores perform exceptionally well at refusing to sell to youth. They can’t afford to risk it— their livelihoods depend in part on being allowed to sell age-restricted products. And that’s an important point, because if your objective is to move smokers into reduced risk options, you need to meet them where they are, and that’s the corner store or local gas station.

Before taking poorlythought-out steps that are likely to box more people— especially those outside cities—into sticking with smoking, why not enforce the existing rules with more enforcement of shady online sellers and demanding strict age verification requirements? Why not step up the mystery shoppers and increase penalties against retailers who do sell to youth? Why not actually enforce the existing flavour ban?

This last point is important. Lost in all the media coverage is the fact that there already is a national ban on flavours that appeal to youth—things like bubble gum and cotton candy. Appropriate, federally permitted flavours, however, encourage adult smokers to try vaping. Rather than taking the reactionary and counterproductive step of banning all flavours or limiting where they can be sold, let’s actually enforce the existing flavour ban.

In the wake of the U.S. vaping illnesses, misinformation about vaping is rampant. But in November 2019, the CDC identified vitamin E acetate as a chemical of concern. The additive associated with some black market THC vaping products is never used in the federally permitted nicotine vapes sold in Canada. We recently learned that a London, Ont. teen fell ill after mixing illegal flavours like cotton candy with black market THC. The evidence is increasingly telling us that federally permitted vapes in appropriate flavours and nicotine strengths are not the culprit, and yet this is what B.C. has chosen to go after.

I agree that we need real solutions to stop teens from vaping. I know no one expects these solutions to come from the head of a tobacco and vape company. But the truth is, we do need stricter rules against irresponsible online retailers and better enforcement of existing rules; and government authorities need to do a better job educating youth about the risks and punishing bad actors.

It is finally time to have an honest conversation about vaping.