Jason Kim smoked cigarettes for 20 years, and when he finally kicked the habit with the help of e-cigarettes, the Calgary businessman decided to start selling the devices to other smokers trying to quit.
“I’ve been in business for five years and in the beginning it was very much a small, niche type of a business,” Kim says.
“It was a group of people trying to get off cigarettes and onto something that was a little bit better for you.”
When Canada passed the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act in May 2018, tobacco companies like Imperial Tobacco Canada entered Canada’s vaping market.
Vype was launched in the spring of 2018 and Juul began selling products a short time later.
Since then, according to health advocacy groups like Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, the vaping industry has been targeting young people by making devices more attractive, accessible and addictive.
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“When big tobacco, big nicotine entered the vaping market last year, it felt like open season had been declared on Canadian kids,” said Cynthia Collard, the organization’s executive director, during a press conference last week in Ottawa.
“Tobacco companies are hooking today’s kids with the same tools they used to hook their parents and parents to cigarettes — make them trendy, make them ubiquitous, make them affordable, make them easy to start.”
Collard and other groups including the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Medical Association are calling on Ottawa to implement an interim order that would curb the marketing of vaping products, restrict the flavours available and regulate their nicotine levels.
Canada’s chief public health officer, meanwhile, says she is very concerned about the increase in vaping rates among Canadians teens.
“This is a definite public health concern and we need to do more about reducing vaping in youth,” said Dr. Theresa Tam.
“A suite of regulatory measures is needed.”
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Tam says officials with the Public Health Agency, as well as Health Canada, are now working on several recommendations that will be given to the federal government after the election. New regulations could include rules on how e-cigarettes are advertised, limits on the sale of flavours and a cap on nicotine concentration levels.
Imperial Tobacco Canada, however, says too many regulatory changes could lead people back to cigarettes.
“The challenge with a ceiling on nicotine is that you have to understand what the consumers use and what they want,” said Eric Gagnon, head of corporate and regulatory affairs for Imperial Tobacco Canada.
“Canada is a high nicotine market, so if you want smokers to actually get away from cigarettes and use vaping products, they have to have a product that is going to satisfy their need.”
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