Health Canada consults on the really dumb idea of making vaping a less appealing alternative to smoking
Health Canada is trying to ban almost all vaping liquid flavours. This is on top of measures to limit nicotine strengths and marketing. It is the nearest they can get to a prohibition without actually having to prohibit the most promising low-risk rival to cigarettes. The likely effects are obvious: more smoking. But in a bizarre twisting of reality and evidence, Health Canada finds that making vaping less attractive relative to smoking will… um … reduce smoking. And that’s how it justifies the measure. We respond with a counter-analysis.
The Health Canada package rests on four documents, the latter two be unpublished but “available on request” from Health Canada.
The response from me, David Abrams, Ray Niaura and David Sweanor is summarised below in the cover letter to Health Canada, and the full submission (17 pages) is available in PDF form here: The case against banning flavoured e-liquids in Canada
Clive Bates – The Counterfactual – 2021-09-02.