Today’s daily vapers consume about one fiftieth the toxins their daily-smoking parents consumed at the same age
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. 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.
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.
Ian Irvine – Special to Financial Post – March 16, 2021.
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