Well, what a week that was!
Rights4Vapers was in Ottawa last week to welcome our new MPs and celebrate World Vape Day and World No Tobacco Day.
Our friends from tobacco control were also there. Monday kicked off with the Triad of Trouble in Tobacco Control holding a press conference, you may have caught it, or perhaps luckily missed it. No worries, it was same old, same old, with a dash of something new!
“Save the Children!”
“Ban Flavours!”
“Nicotine bad!”
and the something new
“Smokers Don’t Vape!”
They even graced us with a technical briefing, which I’ve kindly linked [here]. Spoiler alert: it’s more “technical” than “brief.”
But hey, there’s a plot twist! Economics professor Ian Irvine clapped back with a sharp rebuttal to the briefing written by Ms. Collard from Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. It’s a good one, and worth the read if you enjoy logic, data, and watching myths get mildly roasted.
Professor Irvine’s Thoughts
Concerning: Backgrounder slide set accompanying the press conference of Callard, Doucas and Hagen, Ottawa, May 26, 2025
Slide 1. Vaping among school kids. I agree that there are too many kids vaping. But beware of the unintended consequences of blanket action. Before cannabis was legalized, were kids able to get it? Yes, from the illegal sector.
Avoid incentivizing the illegal sector – about 1/3 of the cigarette market is illegal.
I have spoken with many vape shop owners in the last year as part of a research project. They complain endlessly about the lack of inspection and the disinterest of government when they report rogue vendors.
We take in hundreds of millions of dollars per year in excise levies; can we not use some of that to enforce legislation that balances the right of adults to use low-risk substances with the need to restrict sales to kids? Blanket measures are not appropriate.
Slide 2. Youth vaping and smoking rates. The purpose of lower risk nicotine is NOT to abolish nicotine use entirely. It is to transition otherwise smokers to use a less toxic product AND to allow individuals who find that nicotine helps them through their day to consume it in a non carcinogenic form. Callard, Doucas and Hagen (CDH) seem not to believe that. If we had a decline in the number of fentanyl users or methamphetamine users that was balanced by an increase in cannabis users, would they claim that we still have the same number of drug users and (sic) the world is no better? This is a very real analogy—cigarettes and fentanyl kill, vapes and cannabis do not.
Sweden has an elevated use of nicotine (perhaps 25%) yet has the lowest rates of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality in Europe by a huge margin. This is because 5% smoke and 20% use snus and pouches.
Slide 3. Decline in smoking rates. Basic error here. The trio string together stats from the CTNS, CTADS and CCHS. Now, we know that the CCHS is most reliable (60,000 samples versus 10,000 for CTNS). We also know it is a survey better designed to elicit truthful answers. The smoking rates from the CCHS are universally above those from the CTNS and CTADS. CDH take one high-estimate from CCHS at the end of their series and attach it to lower CTNS estimates.
But there is a consistent CCHS series that can be retrieved easily via a google search. That series shows a doubling of the rate of decline in smoking since the arrival of Juul and Vuse in 2018 relative to the preceding years. Cigarette sales mirror this pattern. Was this slide really an innocent error?
Slide 4. Has overall nicotine use fallen? See my comments on their slide 2. Why do they lump, not apples and oranges, but apples and poison?
Slide 5. Has the number of former smokers increased since the introduction of vapes? They indicate not. But the point they miss is that the number of those starting smoking has declined, so there is a smaller pool of smokers from which quits can take place.
Slide 6. Are most Canadian vapers former smokers? They answer no. And they are right. But see my comment on their slide 5. Same issue.
Moreover, if vapers would have been smokers in the absence of the new technology, then the greater presence of never-smokers may reflect a major improvement for public health.
Slide 7. Is vaping a superior quit method in Canada? This is quite a tricky issue, because most quitters require several attempts before succeeding – if they do. In these several attempts they may use different methods. For example, if an individual first fails with NRT, then fails with Zyn or Zonnic, and finally succeeds with a vape, note that they used three methods to quit. This is why the numbers attributable to each measure in the CDH table exceed their “total”.
In this situation I put my faith in the Cochrane reviews that tells us that vaping has a relatively high quit success rate (even if low in absolute terms).
A critical feature of anti-smoking aids is that there be several of them available, because different methods are suitable for different individuals. Vapes and heated tobacco products (HTPs) have pharmacokinetic properties similar to smoking and that is why they are relatively successful.
As a mental experiment: imagine there are 5 methods of quitting—vapes, HTPs, oral pouches, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and drug therapy (varenicline). Suppose they each have the same success rate for intending quitters. Would we then conclude that we only need one of them on the market? That is the logic of saying “vapes are no more successful than NRT, so let’s not allow vapes.” This is a non-sequitur. Why not say “since they all have the same success rate, let’s ban all except HTP”? The reality is that different individuals need different tools to quit, and we need a broad menu of support devices; we even need devices that might have low success rates if they contribute to the overall quit rate at the margin.
To conclude:
All told, this set of slides is confused and confusing. I will not venture into the press conference. A question we need to ask is this: is our government funding the spread of misinformation?
Ian Irvine, professor, Economics, Concordia University
Disclosure: I have worked as a consultant for the federal government in the areas of nicotine and alcohol and also in the private sector. Some of my recent research has been supported by the Global Action to End Smoking Foundation.
