Tag: Health Canada

  • ‘Carcinogens On Permitted Vapor Additives List’

    ‘Carcinogens On Permitted Vapor Additives List’

    Photo: New Africa

    Canada’s proposed list of permitted vapor product additives includes dangerous ingredients, according to Imperial Tobacco Canada (ITCAN).

    “To put it bluntly, the list contains at least one known substance that could cause cancer,” said ITCAN Vice President, Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Eric Gagnon in a statement.

    According to ITCAN, several ingredients on the flavor ban proposal list of permitted ingredients are substances that its parent company, British American Tobacco, categorically avoids in its vaping products.

    The company says BAT’s toxicological risk assessment prevents the use of substances classified as having carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic (CMR) properties, as per the Globally Harmonized System for classification and labelling of substances.

    “It is shocking that the government would include a proven and classified CMR substance in its lists of permitted additives for vaping products,” ITCAN wrote on its website. “The effect of a regulation that formally permits such ingredients is simply an encouragement to manufacturers—particularly smaller producers with limited access to scientific literature—to use an inherently unsafe substance in a product that is designed to be inhaled into the lungs.”

    Gagnon cited isophorone as an example. “This substance is classified by the European Union as cancer-causing and acutely toxic. It is also banned by Canadian food and drug regulations from use in human cosmetics,” he said.

    “We encourage Health Canada to reconsider the list and consult with experts to determine the best way forward.”

  • Canada Opens Consultation on Tobacco And Vaping Act

    Canada Opens Consultation on Tobacco And Vaping Act

    Photo: JHVEPhoto

    The government of Canada has opened public consultation on the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (TVPA) ahead of its mandatory parliamentary review. Stakeholders can provide input until April 27, 2022.

    In 2018, the TVPA was amended to protect youth and nonsmokers. The amended act recognized that vaping was significantly less harmful than smoking, and smokers that switched to vaping could reduce their exposure to thousands of chemicals. The Act introduced measures to protect youth through various labeling and promotion regulations.

    Darryl Tempest

    Tobacco harm reduction advocates welcomed the consultation. “Vaping has helped millions of smokers quit and has the potential to help millions more if it weren’t for the misrepresentations of the industry by media and misperceptions surrounding the product itself. It is imperative that Parliamentarians have the opportunity to hear from a wide range of experts as part of the TVPA review process,” said Darryl Tempest, government relations advisor to the Canadian Vaping Association (CVA)

    Health Canada’s discussion paper states, “For adults who smoke, there appears to be a lack of awareness that vaping products are a less harmful source of nicotine for those who currently smoke and switch completely to vaping. A 2020 survey found that only 22 percent of current smokers recognized that vaping is less harmful than smoking cigarettes.”

    In its consultation submission, the CVA will urge Health Canada to rectify this through the issue of relative risk statements for approved use by licensed specialty vape shops. In 2018, Health Canada proposed a “List of Statements for Use in the Promotion of Vaping Products.” According to the CVA, this proposal has been put on the back-burner and has languished in Health Canada’s bureaucracy to the detriment of potential public health gains from smokers switching to vaping.

    “Instead of issuing reasonable statements for use by specialty vape shops, the TVPA has effectively gagged the vape industry through Section 30.43,” the CVA wrote in a press release. Section 30.43 prohibits “the promotion of a vaping product in a manner that could cause a person to believe that health benefits may be derived from the use of the product or from its emission or by comparing the health effects arising from the use of the product or from its emissions with those arising from the use of a tobacco product or from its emissions. The purpose of this prohibition is to prevent the public from being deceived or misled with respect to the health hazards of using vaping products.”

    “The CVA looks forward to actively participating in the review process and will advocate for enhanced measures to protect youth, as well as increased smoker targeted messaging on the benefits of switching to vaping. We encourage all stakeholders to submit feedback,” said Tempest.

  • Canadian Vaping Group Wants End to Flavor Ban Proposal

    Canadian Vaping Group Wants End to Flavor Ban Proposal

    The Canadian government has proposed restrictions on flavored vape products, which Health Canada acknowledges will result in increased combustible cigarette smoking. The justification for the flavor ban is that flavor restrictions will lessen youth vaping rates, according to the Canadian Vaping Association (CVA). However, youth rates are already in decline.

    Credit: Kristina Blokhin

    The Canadian Tobacco and Vaping Survey, 2020, found that youth vaping has declined since 2019. Currently, youth daily vaping is 4.7 percent and Health Canada expects the recently implemented nicotine ceiling will further reduce use and experimentation.

    “Youth daily vaping and addiction rates are actually quite low and expected by tobacco control experts to continue to decline. Generally, youth vaping rates are discussed using data on the amount of youth that have tried vaping over the past 30 days,” said Darryl Tempest, executive director of the CVA. “This is a poor metric to base regulation on because it represents experimentation and not habitual use. Young people that try vaping once at a party are included in this figure. These surveys are also misleading because they include age of majority respondents. If these respondents were excluded from the survey, daily vaping among minors is around 2 percent.”

    In a press release, Tempest stated that if other adult products were regulated consistently with the same concern as past 30-day vape use, both cannabis and alcohol would require severe restrictions, as both daily and past 30-day use prevalence are greater than nicotine vaping.

    “Alcohol is considerably more harmful than nicotine vaping and despite its use being significantly more prevalent than vaping among youth, flavor restrictions have not been considered. This is likely because like vaping, youth are not drinking for flavors,” Tempest states. “Canada has set a goal to reduce tobacco use prevalence to 5 percent or less by 2035. Restricting flavors will push thousands of vapers back to smoking and jeopardize current smoking reduction targets. The CVA calls on Health Canada to forgo the flavor ban and instead focus on proven methods such as increased enforcement and education programs.”

  • Health Canada: Flavor Ban Could Boost Smoking

    Health Canada: Flavor Ban Could Boost Smoking

    Photo: jedsadabodin

    Health Canada has made a “startling admission” that its recent policy to ban the sale of flavored vapor products could contribute to a rise in cigarette consumption, reports Filter, a publication owned and operated by The Influence Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for rational and compassionate approaches to drug use, drug policy and human rights.

    Into its regulatory impact analysis statement on the intended flavor ban, Health Canada acknowledges that its legislation could lead to an increase in smoking, according to Filter.

    “It is anticipated that some dual users who currently use flavored vaping products would not substitute their purchases with tobacco[-flavored] and mint/menthol-flavored vaping products. They would choose to purchase more cigarettes,” the statement reads.

    “The statement is very direct. It’s basically saying, ‘We’re Health Canada, and we’re going to do something that kills Canadians,’” said David Sweanor, an industry expert and chair of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Health, Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa.

    “The statement is very direct. It’s basically saying, ‘We’re Health Canada, and we’re going to do something that kills Canadians.”

    David Sweanor, chair of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Health, Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa

    Matt Culley, a board member of the U.S.-based CASAA, a consumer advocacy nonprofit that promotes smoke-free alternatives to combustible tobacco, said, “The fact that a government can brazenly admit their policy will lead to more smoking and death is wild. It really goes to show how demonized vaping remains.”

    The policy appears to be at odds with Canada’s intention to reduce its smoking rate to 5 percent by 2030.

    Our policies have not aligned with the country’s goals,” Darryl Tempest, the executive director and chief advocate of the Canadian Vaping Association (CVA), told Filter. “It is not a public policy that relates to adults or harm reduction or small businesses.”

    The country amended its tobacco laws to include vaping products in 2018, and some Canadian provinces have already enacted their own flavor bans.

  • Irvine: Health Canada’s Nicotine Cap is Deadly Decision

    Irvine: Health Canada’s Nicotine Cap is Deadly Decision

    If Health Canada has its way, this year vaping will be dealt three knockout blows that will see, not just the end of the business as we know it, but an increase in smoking-related deaths nation-wide, says Ian Irvine, a professor of economics at Concordia University.

    Ottawa is recalibrating the delicate equilibrium between harm reduction and youth use of nicotine. It plans to introduce a mandatory limit on nicotine concentration in e-cigarettes and to ban most flavours. Maximum permissible content is currently at 66 milligrams per millilitre; the new limit will be 20. Eventually, we will see strike three: excise taxes.

    Ian Irvine, courtesy Concordia University

    Harm reduction tries to induce smokers to switch to nicotine products with greatly reduced toxins, particularly if they are habituated or even addicted to nicotine. Public Health England has repeatedly stated that the toxins in e-cigs are at most five per cent of those in regular cigarettes. The toxins that cause cancer come from the burning of tobacco at 700 degrees Celsius. But vaping devices heat rather than burn. Nicotine is not the health demon. It does cause habituation. But it’s the burning that shortens lives.

    In an article for the Regina Leader-Post, Irvin explains that e-cigarettes are not harmless. The health problem vaping poses is that between five and 10 per cent of teens are regular vapers and nicotine is bad for the developing brain. But while a pack-a-day smoker will on average lose 10 years of life, an equally indulgent vaper might lose just one. Most adults who drink moderately, gamble, like sugar too much, or exercise insufficiently might think one year off a normal lifespan a reasonable price to pay to indulge a passion or need.

    As for adult smokers, people considering a transition from smoking to vaping require a product yielding enough nicotine to satisfy their craving. Many potential switchers will not make the transition — and will end up dying prematurely — if they cannot get a strong enough nicotine substitute for their cigarettes. Canada has about 40,000 smoking-related deaths per year, so if even a small percentage of smokers don’t transition because of insufficient nicotine, that will mean thousands more deaths annually.

    If Health Canada succeeds in introducing both a nicotine cap and a flavour ban on vaping, smoking rates will continue to be higher than necessary and many thousands of unnecessary deaths will folllow.

    The entire opinion can be read here.