A Canada Day holiday – and the start date for several tobacco control regulations.
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A Canada Day holiday – and the start date for several tobacco control regulations.

Health Authorities have a tendency to use the first days of January and July as the moment when regulations come into force. And so it is that this week a number of changes to the tobacco and vaping regulations are taking effect. Links to more detailed fact sheets are at the bottom of this post. Federal…

Heat-not-burn cigarettes are much cheaper than regular cigarettes
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Heat-not-burn cigarettes are much cheaper than regular cigarettes

Heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco products may look like short cigarettes, but they function in a very different way. In cigarettes, it is fire (combustion) that releases the nicotine from the tobacco leaf. With heat-not-burn cigarettes, the tobacco rod is inserted into a device, where it is impaled on an electronically-heated element which vaporizes the nicotine. These…

Cigarette taxes went up across Canada today — a tiny bit
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Cigarette taxes went up across Canada today — a tiny bit

It’s no April Fools. Federal taxes were increased on cigarettes today — from $28.43 per carton of cigarettes to $28.85, or $0.042 per package of 20 cigarettes. This increase was not the result of a budgetary decision this year, but because of an automatic quinquennial inflation adjustment introduced in the 2014 budget, and annualized in the 2018 budget. If…

Sales of combustible tobacco are falling in many countries
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Sales of combustible tobacco are falling in many countries

During last week’s investor day, British American Tobacco made public many of its estimates of legal and illegal tobacco sales around the world. Combined with official reports from countries which monitor sales (like Canada and France), and with estimates from BAT’s competitors, these help give us a picture of what is happening to the global tobacco…

Yet more federal government opinion research on vaping
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Yet more federal government opinion research on vaping

Last spring the federal Privy Council Office (the department which serves the Prime Minister and Cabinet) commissioned a series of focus groups across Canada to gain information on a number of topical issues. The topics ranged greatly, with Canadians being asked for their input on possible names for national pharmacare and climate plans, to their…