Wow, we have time?
Evidence of meeting #39 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nicotine.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #39 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nicotine.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Let's look at the whole concept of an e-cigarette. For those e-cigarettes that don't have nicotine—all they have is some sort of flavoured whatever.... I mean, why would you want to inhale a flavoured whatever when it has absolutely nothing in it?
The question is, are we talking about the actual vehicle of the vaporizer or the e-cigarette thing that is probably the biggest problem? At the end of the day if you treated the one with nicotine as a drug and therefore put it under that section of the Food and Drug Act, and if you took the rest that had nothing but sweet water in it and you just put that under food, then what you would need to do is to regulate the industrial component, the manufacturing component, all the bits and pieces that go to make it to ensure that they meet certain standards.
Could one do that? How then would one know for sure? If you took the other one just as a consumer product, and it has nothing but flavoured water.... As we heard Mr. Lunney say, the bottom line is that people could still use it for whatever the heck they want to do, so quietly at home. Are we actually just talking about the whole concept of the electronic mode? Is that what we're really talking about as being the big problem here?
12:55 p.m.
Excutive Director, Canadian Public Health Association
It's a big part of the problem. I wish we could just narrow it down to the one thing. At the end of the day, humans being what they are, given any device, they will figure out a way to abuse it. So you have the perfect e-cigarette that is the right dose. Well then, you have someone who smokes it 18 hours a day.
Acetaminophen, well, it's really easy to overdose with it too and to take too many doses of acetaminophen. Who would have thought that cold medicine would be ground up by kids to get stoned? This is the reality we live with. In the absence of any regulations, in the absence of any standards, it's the wild, wild west. It's like no one has a clue what they're going to be inhaling.
If standards are at least put in place, then we can say that at least the mechanism is reasonably safe, and once the studies start coming in, we'll know.
Can we treat this as a cessation device? Personally, I would like to see the ones not containing nicotine banned, because what good do they do? They're being promoted to kids, “Oh, this is cool.” Well, it's stupid, but kids will be kids. Focus all of our energy on something that actually has the potential to do some good, and that's getting people off traditional cigarettes. Yes, there might be harms associated with that new tool, but nothing—nothing—is going to be as bad as smoking traditional cigarettes.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ben Lobb
Thank you, Ms. Fry.
Now, with the committee's indulgence, I'd like to offer Mr. Young a bit of time to ask some questions and then we'll adjourn the meeting.
Go ahead, Mr. Young.
October 30th, 2014 / 12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We've been listening to many witnesses before this committee. I've come to a conclusion regarding what this whole thing is about. It's about a society that tells people, “You need more drugs”. Drugs companies and tobacco companies are capitalizing on that and saying, “Here's a cool way to get your drugs. We're going to let society deal with the consequences”.
When I was in the legislative assembly of Ontario, I went into a liquor store one day. They had what I called a children's section. They were marketing to children. They had a “spiked cherry” drink. These are alcoholic drinks with 7% alcohol. They had Mike's Hard Lemonade—with all the sexual connotation. And they had something called Mudslide. I know one girl who got so sick on it one New Year's Eve that she hasn't drunk milkshakes for the last 15 years because they make her want to throw up.
I raised it in the provincial assembly, and we actually banned some of the products, banned some of the names, because we knew they were marketing to children. But here we go again. You have 18% of youth, in one study, who have tried e-cigarettes, and 30% want to. There's no surprise, right?
I get really concerned when I hear about product placement. Movie actors take huge lumps of cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars, to smoke on screen, and the producers take the money to place the brands or the signage. This is when someone's commercial guard is down. They're not watching a TV commercial and saying, “These guys are trying to sell me something”. They're watching a movie and it gets subliminally into their mind. It's a very, very insidious practice.
I note that the drug companies were caught by a whistle-blower, Jeffrey Wigand, who received death threats. He revealed that Brown and Williamson, one of the largest tobacco companies in the States, was actually targeting children, and that it was putting more cancer-causing chemicals and more addictive nicotine in its cigarettes to build its market.
I have just a quick quote. In 1983, Hamish Maxwell, who was president of Philip Morris, directed his marketers—and this is a matter of public record—as follows: “We must continue to exploit new opportunities to get cigarettes on screen and into the hands of smokers.” They spent $2 million a year from 1978 to 1988 doing that when people's commercial guard was down.
I appreciate you coming here and telling us that we, in so many words, need balanced messages. We have to say, “Well it might benefit some people to get off cigarettes, so let's do a lot of studies. Let's do studies and let's find the answers”.
I agree that we have to get the studies done, but when you're giving an intelligent, academic message that is, frankly, mixed and you're up against this tremendous commercial onslaught that's already hit $4 billion a year, I'm concerned that by the time these studies are done, hundreds of thousands more people are going to be addicted to nicotine and to these products.
When you see the number of lives in Canada that have been destroyed by alcohol abuse and tobacco.... People get sick, and there's a whole range of other drugs. This committee just did a study on opioids. Considering the destruction that's happening, which society has to pay for, I think we need clearer warnings. We need to act now and get the warnings out about the health issues.
The advertising we saw today was basically connecting sex and so on with, “Try this drug. Try this device. You're going to be more popular, or you're going to have a happier life” or whatever. The second phase is coming when they already have the devices and they're told, “By the way, you want the real flavour? You want the real experience? Try our cigarettes. Then you're going to get the real...like the ones the adults have.” This is where they're heading, and they do it in such an insidious manner.
Would you consider supporting a law that restricted product placement in movies or in TV shows or at least made producers say at the beginning of the show, “The following companies have paid to place their products in this film or TV show”?
1 p.m.
Executive Director, Manitoba Lung Association, Canadian Lung Association
Definitely. Yes, absolutely.
1 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Do you have any comments on the safety warnings? I feel a tidal wave is coming with this stuff. It's another way we're going to create hundreds of thousands more addicts. A lot of people have been in here and said, “Well, we need more answers. Let's do more studies”.
What should we be doing now?
1 p.m.
Excutive Director, Canadian Public Health Association
I would say there are a lot of studies in the works right now. It's not like waiting another five years. In the next two years, we're going to know much more than we know today.
The fact of the matter is that they are here, and so without any regulations it is the wild wild west. Our concern, especially now, is that 10 years ago there were a small number of independent manufacturers. Those independent manufacturers are being bought out by big tobacco, and you know what the motivation is.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ben Lobb
Thank you very much.
I appreciate the committee's indulgence in letting us just go a couple of minutes over.
Thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of your day.
The meeting is adjourned.