VITA Participates in the Consultation on the Review of the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act

Ottawa, April 28, 2022 – Yesterday, The Vaping Industry Trade Association (VITA) formally submitted its comments to Health Canada as part of the consultation on the first mandatory review of the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (TVPA) since its implementation on May 23, 2018.

The review of the Act focuses primarily on the vaping provisions to protect youth. From the outset, VITA shared the governments and publics concern about youth vaping.

“VITA believes that vaping products should only be for adult smokers seeking to reduce risk or who want to quit smoking. Let’s be clear: under no circumstances should youth and non-smokers consume vaping products,” said Daniel David, President of VITA.

In the submission VITA reminds government that there are already several control and regulatory mechanisms in place that govern the vaping industry. The government should now focus on better enforcement of laws and regulations rather than seeking to further restrict access to vaping products for adult ex-smokers.

In addition to a consultation considering a ban on flavoured vaping products, the federal government proposed in its last budget an excise tax model that is intended to be implemented by next October. Both proposals followed a restriction implemented in 2021 that lowered the concentration of nicotine allowed from 66mg/mL to 20mg/mL—a decrease of nearly 70%.

Note that:

• According to Health Canada, and as stated on its website, “vaping is less harmful than smoking” and “there are short-term general health improvements if you completely switch from smoking cigarettes to vaping products.”
• The federal government is perhaps unintentionally feeding the perception that smoking and vaping are equally harmful. Vaping is a tobacco harm reduction product and helps ex-smokers in their transition from smoking. As a result, the government should not consider vaping products as if the harms from tobacco do not exist.
• New additional and restrictive measures on vaping products will only serve to further strengthen an already growing illicit market which has no quality controls or youth prevention intentions.

“We ask that policy makers and Health Canada to take the time to recognize the challenges we raised and carefully consider alternatives to the current approach of creating ever more restrictive policies, instead of working to better enforce the laws we already have in place.” added Mr. David.

VITA’s Submission to Health Canada: LINK