The Evolution of Rights 4 Vapers:
The R4V Story
Every movement begins with a story. Ours began with a woman named Maria.
Maria was a person who smoked and tried everything to quit, patches, gums, prescriptions. Nothing worked. Until one day, she picked up a vape. For the first time in her life, she stopped smoking. That single moment didn’t just change her health, it planted the seed of a movement.
Maria opened a vape shop, and there she witnessed the power of vaping on a larger scale. Day after day, parents, nurses, construction workers, grandparents walked in, each one struggling with smoking. And time after time, she saw vaping work where everything else had failed. Hope was being restored, one person at a time.
But it didn’t take long before those stories were dismissed. Government-funded NGOs attacked people like Maria and the thousands of Canadians who had finally found their way out of smoking. Not because vaping didn’t work, it clearly did, but because we dared to believe in choice. We weren’t following their script.
That’s when Rights4Vapers was born. We were not lobbyists. We were not a corporation. We are consumers and shop owners who refused to be silenced.
The Flavour Study
When Health Canada and others tried to say flavours didn’t matter, we asked the people who actually vape. Our national flavour study gathered thousands of voices across Canada. Our little movement suddenly had one of the world’s largest dataset of vaping behaviour.
The results were clear: flavours are not a gimmick. They are the reason many Canadians who smoke succeed in quitting.
We presented those results to government so consumer voices couldn’t be ignored.
Taking to the Streets
When polite letters weren’t enough, we protested. We stood on the steps of legislatures with signs and determination.
We wanted politicians, media, and the public to see us, not as statistics, but as human beings who had quit smoking our way.
Submissions and Advocacy
We fought in every consultation. Whether it was the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act review, tax frameworks, or flavour bans, we submitted evidence, data, and real stories. We showed how bans and punitive taxes would push people back to cigarettes or into black markets.
We encouraged Canadians who vape and smoke to send letters to their federal and provincial representatives.
Hundreds of thousands did. We proved that smart regulation saves lives; over-regulation costs them.
The Human Side
This fight has never been about slick campaigns. It has always been about people. People who quit smoking their way. People who finally found hope in a tool that wasn’t created in a Big Pharma lab or by Big Tobacco. The vape was invented by a smoker who couldn’t quit and he gave it to the people.
That spirit guided us onto the road for our bus tour. What many didn’t know was that our “tour bus” was a 2009 RV that had just as much personality as it did problems. We spent as much time on the side of the road with an overheated engine, a blown-out tire, and a cracked windshield as we did rolling into towns. But every stop mattered.
We drove across Ontario and Quebec, meeting vapers face-to-face, listening to their stories, and sharing ours. We met politicians who finally saw us as real people instead of numbers on a page. And in between breakdowns and late-night repairs, we built something bigger than a campaign: we built a family, a community, and memories that fuel our fight to this day.
That’s why we fight for all safer nicotine products: vaping, heated tobacco, pouches, and whatever comes next. Because choice matters. Lives depend on it.
Where We Stand Today
Rights4Vapers has grown from a small group of frustrated consumers into a national movement—without ever leaving the confines of Maria’s dining room table. Thanks to technology, determination, and the belief that consumer voices matter, we’ve built something far bigger than ourselves.
We’ve launched bold campaigns like Tastes Like Choice, created World Safer Nicotine Day, and are now building the Safer Nicotine Summit, a space where all voices, even those who disagree with us, are welcome.
Yes, we’ve been attacked. Yes, we’ve been dismissed. But we are still here. Because this fight has never been about products. It has always been about people, dignity, and the right to quit smoking in the way that works for you.
And we are only getting stronger.