Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said she and representatives from a number of anti-smoking organizations met this week with a senior staff member for Mental Health and Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks.
“We left the meeting with the firm belief that we are not going to see a ban on vaping flavours this year,” she said. “We are greatly disappointed.”
Callard said the official gave a range of logistical reasons for why the restrictions weren’t going ahead — including the limited time left to enact them as the Liberal government stares down a potential spring election.
Fuck the flavours, ban single use batteries in every application.
There are some valid uses for replaceable batteries. Fire alarms for example is not something i want to take off the ceiling to recharge every few weeks.
That said, banning single use/non refillable vapes is something i could support.
Fine, don’t ban flavours. But for the love of Christ, punish people who litter their vape products, because it’s out of control.
For the pods it should be the same as Alchohol containers. Have a deposit payed when they are bought and be able to be returned to get the deposit back. Like if you pay a dollar extra per disposal pod you should be able to return them to a waste facility to get that money back.
No idea, but I’m talking about stuff like this:
That’s what I collected at a community cleanup, from one tiny spot of a much larger public area I was at.
If those aren’t for vaping, then we should still punish the assholes who are throwing them all over the ground!
Punishment won’t work, same with regular littering. There is a fine but there should be incentive to dispose of them correctly.
Honestly, I am not a big fan of government surveillance, but god damn it taxes smokers and those who vape more.
Vapers like myself who use refillable RTAs/RTDs are already taxed up the ass for juice. I purchase from bargain e juice where a 120 ml bottle is about $25, and provincial/federal excise taxes are around $35. So for a bottle that 10 years ago I could purchase for $15-18, I now pay $60.
Fuck taxing us more.
I get why you’re frustrated about the taxes, but let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. My message to increase taxes on smokers and vapers isn’t about punishing people for their choices, it’s about offsetting the huge costs that smoking and vaping put on the healthcare system and society as a whole.
You’re already paying a pretty penny in taxes on your e-juice, but the reality is that the healthcare costs associated with smoking and vaping are way higher than what’s being brought in through taxes. We’re talking $6 billion dollars each year to treat smoking-related illnesses (https://www.lung.ca/cla-commends-canadian-government’s-step-toward-tobacco-industry-accountability). Let’s be real, the tax revenue from vaping products isn’t necessarily being used to address the health concerns associated with vaping.
Rather than just opposing increased taxes, maybe it’s worth thinking about how we can make the tax system more fair. Could we structure taxes to encourage people to use safer products, like your refillable RTAs/RTDs, over more hazardous ones. The goal here is to promote public health and reduce the costs associated with smoking and vaping.
The stupidity shown by governmental oversight in this battle is beyond compare. Instead of restricting cheap over-the-counter disposable vapes, they approved them – then restricted more expensive rebuildable tank and drip atomizers that required mod units to operate.
I truly have to wonder how many of those with oversight on the original vape issue had stock options in vaping companies that sell disposable units … because it seems they ignored common sense for utter ignorance and possible selfishness.
Everything the government does involving vapes is wrong. Regulating 50mg out of existence was stupid. Threatening a flavour ban for YEARS was insanely stupid. Running questionably scientific anti-vaping ads (disclaimer, that one might’ve been AB-specific, I don’t remember) was also stupid, if the goal was ever harm reduction.
And their argument was always that kids are drawn to the colourful packaging. OK, why not make it like cannabis packaging? And then they never even did that, proving that it was all a ruse in the first place. Personally I think it was to aid in big tobacco getting them back on smokes instead.
“Big Tobacco” is also making money on vapes because they bought stakes in those companies or own them outright. They really don’t care if you smoke or vape, they get paid regardless.
If anything the reason why a flavor ban didn’t happen is because “Big Tobacco” successfully lobbied against it.
There was a time not that long ago where that wasn’t true, and independent companies are still pretty easy to buy from. For a LONG time, tobacco companies were pushing “smokeless” devices which still involved tobacco leaf.
For the record, I’m clean from nicotine for something like a year now. I just hate all the pseudoscientific bullshit pushed by the tobacco industry about vaporizers because they threatened their status quo.
