Yes, thank you so much for your questions. They are important ones.
We at CAMH really try to be the honest brokers around bringing the science to bear to what our recommendations are and point out where there are gaps. So I want to make sure that we are clear about that as well.
Overwhelmingly we recognize that a regulatory framework overall benefits society and the individuals who might be suffering from addictions, because of a framework of understanding addictions as an interaction between somebody's brain behaviour and society.... It's an interactional effect.
Having said that, when we look at e-cigarettes, there are some mixed reports that suggest that young kids experiment. Because they may be subject to market forces, there being these e-cigarettes as starter products and then they are pulled away, much like hard drug dealers use people. They give them drugs for free a little bit, and then they get them hooked. Now, when they get an e-cigarette, they try it out, they like it, and then the next switch is to the cigarette.
Because of the changing landscape, initially e-cigarettes were separate from the tobacco industry. But more and more, e-cigarette markets are now being taken over by the tobacco industry itself. It's a bit confusing as to whether those industries are buying these products off to kill the market, to grow the market, or to have dual markets. It's not clear. I'm not an expert in it, but that's what we observe. When you look at it from that perspective, one has to worry about these vulnerable kids who may be getting pulled in.
On the second hand, the large population-based studies, which are a little older, don't point to the fact that kids are taking on e-cigarettes in any large numbers. That could be because these are population-level surveys and are missing the kids who are at the highest risk in society for taking this up, because they are surveys done at population levels.
Does that make sense?