E-cigarette ban ‘not an option’: Commons health committee calls for legalization
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Tom Blackwell | March 12, 2015 | Last Updated: Mar 13 9:46 AM ET
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It’s time to bring e-cigarettes in from the cold and regulate the devices as unique products that might pose some dangers, but could also help smokers quit a lethal habit, MPs have recommended in a rare all-party consensus.
The House of Commons’ health committee calls in a new report for ending the legal grey zone that surrounds the technology in Canada and implementing a new set of rules that balances the benefits and risks of “vaping.”
The law should limit e-cigarette advertising, require they look different than tobacco cigarettes and ban their use in public places — but not unduly discourage adult smokers from trying them, says the unanimous report released this week.
“The idea of a ban is not really an option at all. They’re here,” said Ben Lobb, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee. “Most of the experts concluded that e-cigarettes are better for your health than tobacco cigarettes. If we’re looking at reducing harm to Canadians, that’s a good starting point.”
Health Canada has, in fact, effectively prohibited nicotine-containing e-cigarettes to date, treating them like unapproved drugs, ordering businesses to stop selling them and seizing shipments at the border.
Yet they are still sold and used widely across the country.
Rona Ambrose, the federal health minister, asked the committee last year to look into the issue. She offered few hints Thursday about what the government would do with the MPs’ suggestions.
“We will review the findings of the report and respond in due course,” said Michael Bolkenius, a spokesman for the minister.
Powered by batteries, e-cigarettes heat up a liquid that creates vapour and mimics the sensation of smoking. They are meant to deliver a hit of addictive nicotine but none of the carcinogens in smoke.
The public-health world has been divided over the issue, with some scientists and anti-smoking advocates convinced e-cigarettes are a potential disruptive technology that could demolish current smoking rates, and others doubtful of the benefits and fearful they will make smoking acceptable again.
Experts on both sides of the debate applauded the committee’s report.
“The conclusions are much better than we would have expected,” said Dr. Gaston Ostiguy, medical director of the stop-smoking clinic at the Montreal Chest Institute and a strong proponent of the devices.
The committee’s call for standards to govern the contents of e-cigarette liquid are particularly important, since users currently can never be totally sure of what they’re buying, he said.
A small study his clinic presented at a conference recently found that 42% of patients who used e-cigarettes had quit tobacco entirely and another 31% cut their smoking by half within 30 days.
‘The idea of a ban is not really an option at all. They’re here’
It was not a randomized clinical trial — the most rigorous kind of evidence — but Dr.Ostiguy said he has seen some remarkable turnarounds among patients using the technology. They include a man in his 70s with debilitating emphysema, who quit a 70-cigarette-a-day habit that other treatments had failed to curb. He felt so much better, he installed his own home gym.
Dr. Meena Dawar, a public-health officer with Vancouver Coastal Health and staunch critic of e-cigarettes, said it is about time the federal government takes action, noting that her province, Ontario and Nova Scotia have their own vaping laws in the works.
“I’m very pleased that each province doesn’t have to fill up the regulatory vacuum in a patchwork manner,” she said. “E-cigarettes have profited, essentially, in this regulatory vacuum, and this stuff is being promoted to youth all over the place, and being sold to youth.”
Rob Cunningham, a policy expert at the Canadian Cancer Society, said he hoped the report would be a catalyst for regulation by the federal government.
The committee calls for a separate regulatory system that, among other things, would ban sales to minors and require e-cigarettes to be “visually distinct” from tobacco products to avoid luring vapers toward smoking.
It also urges safety standards, and a requirement that the products be sold in child-resistant packaging, after reports from the U.S. of children getting sick after consuming the liquid.
Users should not need a prescription to buy one, but makers should be barred from making unproven health claims, the report recommends. It suggests banning their use in federally regulated public spaces, though acknowledges there is little evidence the vapour could harm other people.
The committee would allow some advertising to let current smokers know they exist, but restrict ads and promotional activities.
National Post
source: http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/0...mons-health-committee-calls-for-legalization/
"how am I gonna TAX these Clouds" 
