Dr. John Oyston, Mar 10^th 2022

Canada’s 4.6 million smokers are being deprived of accurate information about less harmful alternatives to smoking.

According to Public Health England, the health risk of vaping is unlikely to exceed 5% of the is from smoking. Last year 48,000 Canadians died from smoking. Most of them knew that smoking was damaging their health, but they were so dependent on the nicotine in cigarettes that they were unable to quit. If they had been able to switch to vaping as a safer source of nicotine, over 45,000 of these deaths could have been avoided.

Vape shops across Canada would love to be able to tell smokers this, but they are banned from doing so by the Canadian Government!

The Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (TVPA) came into force on November 19, 2018. It includes Section 30.43, a law that 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.”

This means that when someone in a vape store is trying to sell a vape (or “e-cigarette”) to a smoker they cannot say that vaping is less harmful than smoking, or that vape contains fewer toxic chemicals than tobacco smoke, even though Health Canada says:

“Completely replacing cigarette smoking with vaping will reduce your exposure to harmful chemicals.”

and

“Vaping is less harmful than smoking. Many of the toxic and cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco and the tobacco smoke form when tobacco is burned”

Vape shop owners and staff, who are usually ex-smokers who feel that switching to vaping saved their lives, are unable to tell their customers these facts about vaping because of Section 30.43 of the TVPA.

During a webinar with Rights4Vapers “Health Canada acknowledged that further public education is needed so that Canadians who smoke are aware that, while vaping is not harmless, it is less harmful than smoking cigarettes for those who quit smoking and completely switch to vaping.”

It is not in anyone’s interests for people to make false claims about the benefits of vaping such as “Vaping cures cancer!”, but it IS important for smokers’ to know that scientists have estimated that the risk of getting cancer from vaping is about 1% of the risk of getting cancer from smoking. Without this information, they cannot appreciate how important it is to quit smoking, and how beneficial switching to vaping could be.

In order to resolve this conundrum, Health Canada planned to work with the vaping industry to determine a set of agreed statements that both sides felt accurately stated the facts about the risks and benefits of vaping for smokers:

HEALTH CANADA – FOR CONSULTATION

DRAFT 2018-09-04

List of Statements for Use in the Promotion of Vaping Products

1. If you are a smoker, switching completely to vaping is a much less harmful option

2. While vaping products emit toxic substances, the amount is significantly lower than in tobacco smoke

3. By switching completely to vaping products, smokers are exposed to a small fraction of the 7,000 chemicals found in tobacco smoke

4. Switching completely from combustible tobacco cigarettes to e-cigarettes significantly reduces users’ exposure to numerous toxic and cancer-causing substances

5. Completely replacing your cigarette with a vaping product will significantly reduce your exposure to numerous toxic and cancer causing substances

6. Switching completely from smoking to e-cigarettes will reduce harms to your health

7. Completely replacing your cigarette with an e-cigarette will reduce harms to your health

These are a reasonable set of statements, but they could be improved. For example, the New Zealand Ministry of Health supports a “Vaping Facts” website that includes:

Vaping has the potential to help people quit smoking and contribute to New Zealand’s Smokefree 2025 goal.

Nicotine is addictive, but it’s the toxins produced by burning tobacco that cause smoking-related illnesses. Vaping can vary from no nicotine to high nicotine, and is much less harmful than smoking.

Vaping has helped many people quit smoking and is a legitimate way to become smoke-free.

https://vapingfacts.health.nz/

The “List of Agreed Statements” proposal has been languishing within Health Canada since at least September 2018. It is unconscionable that the organization responsible for the health of Canadians has blocked Canada’s smokers from being told the truth about vaping for so long.

The gag order on Canada’s vaping industry should be lifted immediately. Vape stores should be able to share published scientific information about vaping with their customers, limited only by the same laws against false advertising that apply to all other businesses.