FLAVOUR BANS WILL DRIVE MILLIONS OF VAPERS BACK TO SMOKING
putting out a cigarette

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Health Canada abdicates its responsibility to protect the health of ALL Canadians

Toronto, Ontario – June 18, 2021 – Canadian vapers and smokers have been abandoned by the federal government. The new proposed regulations that will ban all flavoured vapour products will make these products less appealing to smokers looking for a reduced harm alternative to smoking and drive current vapers back to smoking. 

“Health Canada is willfully making a proven tobacco harm reduction tool less appealing to smokers and vapers,” said Maria Papaioannoy, spokesperson for Rights4Vapers, Canada’s largest vaper consumers’ rights organization. “It is putting vapers and smokers who are looking to quit at risk by removing products from store shelves that have helped millions of Canadians throw their cigarettes away for good.”

Public health organizations around the world agree: vaping is a less harmful alternative to smoking. Health Canada acknowledges this fact on its website. Yet, it continues to ignore the potential public health benefits of a progressive vaping regulatory framework to appear to be fighting an imagined vaping epidemic to gain political points. 

“Health Canada acknowledges that cigarette smoking kills 48,000 Canadians a year and that vaping is far less hazardous. But then actively engages in measures that will kill the legal vaping market and thus many more Canadians who will continue smoking,” said David Sweanor, Adjunct Professor of Law, the University of Ottawa. “It is time to reject abstinence-only agendas and embrace basic public health principles.”

Flavour bans are serious enough that there are currently three Charter challenges in Canada at different stages in the legal processes. The Canadian Constitutional Foundation believes “…flavor restrictions, have the potential to make [vapes] less attractive or effective as quit-aids—and are considered from the standpoint of potential interference with the right not to be deprived of life, liberty, and the security of the person protected.”

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