Health Committee on June 9th, 2009

[Denis Choinière]

The schedule was not built with the intent of banning any product categories from the marketplace. Let me go through the additives and give you, to excuse the pun, the flavour of what was intended to be captured.

For flavourings we went very broad. We had to refer to other sources to make sure that all 5,000 or so chemicals used for flavouring are captured. Unfortunately, more than flavours are captured, so in the list, below those flavourings we have products used for preservatives, products used for burn rate control, products used as a binder, products used as humectants. We have added these, together with the three compounds—menthol, l-menthol, and l-menthone—that are for menthol purposes.

That is for the flavouring. Then we have a series of additives that we feel are being used, have been used, or will potentially be used to give some type of healthy connotation to new trends; for example, the energy drinks that have been and may still be quite popular with kids. Caffeine, taurine, and glucuronolactone have been used, so we wanted to capture these.

There are also probiotics, vitamins, and minerals. I understand that for the tobacco industry this category may be too broad. What we intended to capture was mineral nutrients, so that you don't claim vitamin C or calcium or so that you don't get your dose of potassium with your daily cigarettes, if you like. That was the intent.

We are also capturing colouring, because we have seen products that are fairly attractive. I'm showing you a cigarette that is all black, with gold covering the filter. We have seen others, in the U.S. market, that are bright pink or other colours. For us, colouring agents were important. However, we did not want to prohibit manufacturers from building the traditional cigarette look; that is, either white or with an imitation cork tip, and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Choinière.

Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to continue with my colleague's questioning about menthol. There is a long list of additives that have been excluded from the schedule of prohibited additives, and you've touched on that.

My understanding is that in the manufacture of certain products—I'll use the example of apple juice—they just add vitamin C to it as a manufacturing part of it. With cigarettes, I believe in one of the letters my colleague brought up they mentioned vanilla as a flavouring that's quite often added.

When you were doing this list, were there any vitamins and minerals used in the normal manufacture of cigarettes that you looked at? Is that something you could comment on?

[Denis Choinière]

Thank you for the question.

The cigarettes that we've seen passed, as was shown by Mr. Glover, apparently contained vitamin C, but as well had added fruit juice, and I can't recall which fruit juice.

We've also seen in the German market some cigarettes that had vitamin E added to them.

We went fairly broad to make sure that those types of practices were not going to continue, in order to limit the potential appeal for youth.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Okay, but my question was, if we look at the normal manufacture of cigarettes, is it the normal practice in North America to put certain minerals or vitamins in, whether for shelf life or anything along those lines? Is that something that's a standard practice in their manufacturing already?

[Denis Choinière]

In Canada we have what's called a Virginia flue-cured tobacco cigarette market. It's basically Virginia tobacco flue-cured leaf, and you usually don't need additives for that tobacco. However, what we've seen is that when you manufacture the paper you need some chemicals, and some of those chemicals could be mistaken to be minerals, because they're based on silicium or on potassium, and so forth. That's why I put some emphasis earlier on the fact that we were tracking mineral nutrients; that we don't want to capture, for example, calcium carbonate that is used to make the paper, or some other compound.

Maybe one thing I should add for the schedule is that the schedule as presented is part of an amendment that is targeted to youth. But if later on we find there are some compounds that may have an impact on addictiveness or toxicity, obviously we would want to also use the schedule to target those compounds.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That was my next question, to talk a little about the schedule. We've heard that in other legislation, sometimes it's good to put things right into the legislation, but other times you put it into a schedule.

How does using the schedule give more flexibility? Could you comment on that too?

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the member's question.

With all respect to industry members, who I'm sure will be writing or testifying after me, this is an interesting area in which to regulate and legislate. It's rather a game of leapfrog. We will design legislation and regulation, they will comply with it, and then, as with any other business—this is not meant to be a criticism—they will look at how they can leverage it and find opportunities within it and see what new markets it opens up for them.

What we have intended with the creation of the schedules is flexibility that would allow us over time to respond to the constant back and forth of regular business cycles that occur in this—and, quite frankly, any other—marketplace and any other industry. Rather than enshrine it in the legislation, this provides us the flexibility, as we see new product innovations, to say that they are appropriate and to allow them, or maybe to say that there are issues associated with them that need to be dealt with and add them to the schedule, for the reasons we've enunciated earlier. It provides for a significantly more flexible, nimble process to deal with the types of innovations we've seen.

Maybe it wasn't entirely clear in some of my opening remarks, but these are new product categories. These were rounding errors a few years ago, and there are now 405 million units a year.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

How do you know they're actually getting to kids? Is there any hard evidence?

[Paul Glover]

I'll turn to my colleagues for some of the details on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Mr. Choinière.

[Denis Choinière]

We have surveys that are done regularly. One is the Canadian tobacco use monitoring survey; others are youth smoking surveys. We also have provincial partners who do surveys. Although we don't have a lot of specific questions on little cigars, we know from “ever used” questions that we have up to 25%, as we mentioned earlier.

“Ever used” doesn't mean they're currently smoking those; we know they're also smoking cigarettes. When a youth starts smoking, they usually start smoking what their friends smoke, or if they steal what their parents are smoking they'll start smoking what their parents are smoking. If their friends are smoking cigarettes, they'll start cigarettes. If their friends are smoking little cigars, they'll smoke those as well. It's just contributing to the appeal that tobacco products may have.

We have also seen reports from places where youth hang out that what you see on the floor is butts from little cigars, or you see them smoking little cigars.

[Paul Glover]

Madam Chair, I have one point to add in terms of specific numbers on those surveys.

Our research and information tells us that every year approximately 210,000 children experiment, and from among that number, every year 35,000 become regular smokers. Anything we can do to make the enticement less for those 210,000 and for the 35,000 every year who take it up is, we think, an appropriate thing to be doing.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Dr. Carrie.

We're now going into our five-minute rounds for questions and answers.

We'll start with Dr. Duncan.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank the officials for coming.

Like my colleague, I think this is important legislation. This is a product that, to quote Gro Harlem Brundtland, “statistically kills half of its users”. This is very encouraging legislation.

My first comment is around contraband tobacco.

Mr. Glover, I think you said that by its very nature we drive it underground. The current use of contraband products--and you can correct me if I'm wrong--is about 48%. If we're going to further drive this underground, I don't think we're closing the loop on it. We talked about excise tax and the Criminal Code.

A second thing I would ask about is the regional variation of tobacco use for youth. I think it's important to look at those figures.

The third issue is around menthol. Again to pick up on my colleague's comments, I think it's less frightening for youth to use menthol: it's mint. If we remove flavoured products, and I think this is really important, I'm wondering whether our youth will go to menthol products. I'm wondering whether we've looked at the projected impacts of it.

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the member's questions.

I'll answer them in reverse order, starting with menthol. There will be a little bit of repetition, so I'll move through this fairly quickly.

We believe that the menthol market in Canada is markedly different from the one in the U.S., where most of the research comes from. From the limited research we have done with youth, we find that it is not from youth directly. They have indicated to us that it is not an enticement. It is not a product they are interested in.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

I think that's because they currently have bubble gum and chocolate-banana. I'm going back to my youth, and those products did not exist. I also know what products they did use when they tried this at age 10.

[Paul Glover]

We could debate the hypotheses around that....

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

It's a hypothesis, yes.

[Paul Glover]

I would acknowledge that this is the case.

I would like to return to the issue of contraband. I don't want my remarks to leave an incorrect impression.

Do we have direct evidence or research saying one way or the other exactly what is going to happen? Not exactly. But there is evidence, generally, that as you prohibit things, it does create a black market for those things. So it's very broad. In society, we see that phenomenon repeat itself.

That being said, we continue to believe that the important thing is to have a multi-pronged approach that includes prohibiting these products--making them illegal--which would have a significant impact on their use overall, and then working with partner departments that are already fighting the issue of contraband to continue to deal with it on that front. So it must in fact be a multi-pronged approach for us to be successful. That is the strategy.

My colleague, Cathy Sabiston, perhaps has a point I haven't raised.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Can I just...? I agree with the multi-pronged approach, but we're still not closing the loop if it's a 48% use. It's important to attack it at the different points, but you still have to close the loop.

[Cathy Sabiston]

Yes. Thank you for the expanded question.

It's very true that the Tobacco Act is really looking at the illicit market--the manufacture, the sale, and the industry practices, promotions, techniques, and so on. Both are equally critical, but this is dealing with only the one set of issues on the illicit market.

A point that hasn't come up, which I think may be of interest to everyone, is that while menthol is excluded, it still captures other flavours in the cigarette market. And this is, at present, about 200 million units. So it still goes a considerable way towards looking at flavours in the cigarette market.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you so much.

We'll now go to Ms. McLeod.

Sorry, Dr. Duncan.