Health Canada’s vaping flavour ban is still missing in action.

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It’s time to admit it is dead. In June 2021 Health Canada stated its intention to reduce youth vaping by removing flavourings from vaping liquids, and published draft regulations to that effect. Predictably, the release of the draft regulations was followed with noisy and prolonged protests and intensive lobbying by those in the business of selling these...

National Non Smoking Week through the rear-view mirror

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National Non-Smoking Week is 46 years old this month. This is an occasion to reflect on how much has – and has not – changed over the past half century. This post looks at parallels in government tobbacco policy in 1977 and 2023, and what lessons we might take from this history. For many Canadians...

Health Canada’s about-face on reporting requirements for the vaping industry is a bad sign for public health

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PRESS RELEASE.  July 26, 2022 Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada (PSC) is concerned that Health Canada’s recently circulated draft regulations to require  vaping product manufacturers to provide the department with information on its products and activities reflect a departmental priority for the concerns of business over the public health benefit of better information on what...

Health Canada trims its tobacco control sails

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In April 2021, two more documents were released by Health Canada which set out how the department plans to address the health consequences of tobacco use and vaping. The first is Health Canada’s Forward Regulatory Plan for 2022-2024, and the second is the internal evaluation of Health Canada’s activities, including management’s response to the recommendations made by...

The First Four Years: The legislative review of the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act.

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May 23, 2022 marks four years since Royal Assent was given to the legislation that turned the Tobacco Act into the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act. On that day, the Minister of Health is obliged by law to submit to both the Senate and the House of Commons a report on the “review of the provisions and operation of this...

‘Clear the Smoke’: Imperial Tobacco launches an illegal health-reassurance ad campaign

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Last week Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. launched a new campaign using the industry’s decades’ old strategy of invoking medical experts as pitch-men for their products. This post documents how this campaign (a)  continues the industry’s historic marketing practices, (b) is a transgression of federal law and (c) is nonetheless likely to be permitted to continue.  DEJA VU ALL...

Science has marched on: it’s time to update the advice to Canadians

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A year ago we reported on the scientific progress that had been made since 2018, when the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) issued its conclusions on the Public Health Consequences of E-cigarettes.   This post provides a further update on key research findings, offering further evidence for our governments to stop suggesting that “the long-term consequences of...

Flavourings make e-cigarettes more harmful. That’s another good reason to end their use.

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Most Canadian governments which have banned flavoured e-cigarettes have done so in order to reduce the number of young people who are brought into nicotine use through the use of attractive flavourings. Vaping manufacturers have objected to these measures, and are claiming that flavours “save lives” because they encourage smokers to switch to e-cigarettes. Missing...

NNSW – Progress towards implementing the advice of Canada’s Chief Medical Officers of Health

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The overarching objectives of these recommendations are to protect young people from inducements to use vaping devices by regulating such devices as equivalent to tobacco products, and to encourage smokers who use vaping devices to use them solely to end or reduce their use of all nicotine-containing products. Council of Chief Medical Officers of Health...

Doctors’ group calls on new Health Ministers to revamp Canada’s Tobacco Control Strategy

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In advance of the beginning of Canada’s 44th parliament, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada (PSC) has written the new Minister and Associate Minister of Health to recommend priority actions to reduce tobacco use. The letter can be read here. The health charity urges the ministers to address two key weaknesses in the federal approach to tobacco...

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