Health committee  Yes, there are some studies out of Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as recent studies at Buffalo, where they have been looking at the heavy metals that are coming out of these products. Having said that, this is rapidly changing technology. In fact, very quickly after

Health committee  Thank you very much for having me.

Health committee  As I said, because it can be sold anywhere. It's a novelty product that has all these flavourings. It's attractive. People are seeing Hollywood stars doing it in movies or on TV shows, so you're starting to get this renormalization of the behaviour. Also, as we all know, our adol

Health committee  There are two ways to look at that. One is, when they start doing dual use, is that actually an exit strategy from cigarettes completely or is it a stable state? We don't have the science to suggest what it is, but we do have something to point to. As shown in a study by my colle

Health committee  Most definitely, because we see patients who have the worst addictions, and in many cases these are the things that, because of the ready availability and use of it.... Absolutely, the unregulated.... It's the wild west, in what people can put out there. We have even seen electro

Health committee  Well, in the short term, the FDA regulation describes it as generally accepted as safe for humans. That comes from propylene glycol being used as a delivery mechanism in many of the asthma inhalers, which is where we've got the human exposure data from. But again, with an asthma

Health committee  Every regulatory regime will get you so far, after which you start plateauing the impact of that. I don't want people to walk away saying that e-cigarettes are the magic bullet that will fix everything, but it certainly does require study. It does require regulatory framework u

Health committee  Yes. We talked about the short-term and the long-term effects. In the short-term, not to undermine the comprehensive regulatory frameworks that exist in most provinces, absolutely, e-cigarettes should be regulated exactly like a combustible cigarette in terms of where people smok

Health committee  In the absolute it won't; you're absolutely right.

Health committee  I think there may be some confusion. There is no way that we are saying that by legalizing something that you are normalizing its use. I think that is—

Health committee  We're not saying that. We certainly believe that prevention comes...and we know what works for prevention: access, price, family values, and good living conditions. All those social developments prevent kids from getting addicted. Having good prenatal care, all of those things ha

Health committee  They are warned. They are advised, but when we see that 40% of kids are using marijuana, that our hospital is full of kids with psychoses because they got marijuana. We don't know whether it was the marijuana or the marijuana spiked with methamphetamine or cocaine, or problems li

Health committee  I would disagree on the basis that you have to compare it to what you were comparing it to. Regulations will never solve a problem 100%, but compared to the alternative—which we've learned from prohibition, which caused more problems and more deaths than—

Health committee  The consumption of combustible tobacco.

Health committee  Alcohol.