Looks like Canada is going through it's waves of vape hysteria

December 06, 2019 4 Comments

and in Nova Scotia, one of three maritime provinces, which is also Canada's second smallest province, will be banning the sales of flavored eLiquids effective April 1st, 2020.  Unfortunately for our neighbors to the north that's no early April fools joke, as Health Minister Randy Delorey announced yesterday that; "This decision is in response to our concerns about the growth in particular of youth vaping."

This is clearly the same inane reasoning we've seen stateside but we had our dear Canadian friends as maybe being more empirically minded than us Silly Americans, however it appears making hyperbolic decisions on badly collected and poorly interpreted data is not an exclusive to the US.  

Even though Nova Scotia has drastically reduced youth smoking rates much like the rest of the first world countries who have access to vapes in the last 10 years, that progress is seen as an attack by politicians like ol Randy.  "This is not just about reducing vaping access and use, (Why a ban then?) but it's also a means to stem potential transfers into traditional tobacco usage as well," Delorey said.

A totally biased recent survey conducted by Smoke Free Nova Scotia suggested 95% of young Nova Scotians who have tried a vape before in their entire lives said they preferred flavor, which isn't so surprising because in an entirely unrelated survey about who enjoys flavored ice 0% responded with no. 

Delorey also said the province plans to roll out a public education campaign and more vaping legislation next year. Under Nova Scotia's current law, vape products cannot be sold to anyone under 19.  Delorey wouldn't comment on further restrictive steps would be included in this new legislation, but said it's also important that any potential changes align with steps taken at the federal level, which is a more top down approach than we've seen in the US.

Last month several health advocacy groups called on the Nova Scotia government to take urgent action to curb what they called a youth vaping epidemic, which should sound all too familiar to our US readers. 

Kelly Cull, of the Canadian Cancer Society said; "It represents an opportunity to really curb one of the major drivers in terms of how and why youth are using these products in high numbers" completely ignoring the falling smoking rates that coincide with this so called "trend."

She said she'd like to see upcoming legislation raise the minimum age to 21, restrict where e-cigarette products can be sold, cap nicotine levels, and ban online sales.

Whelp there you have it, it appears the vaping hysteria and "won't somebody please think of the children" has hit our cold neighbors to the north.   What do you think about this flavor ban? Will Canada go through the exact same rigmarole we've been going through in the US?  Will cooler heads prevail and sensible legislation come down from their federal government or will the bans increase until smoking levels go back up again?

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