As you mentioned, I am the executive director of the Manitoba Lung Association, but I'm here today to represent the Canadian Lung Association.
First of all, I would like to thank you for holding this hearing, because we really feel that the use of e-cigarettes is a serious health issue that warrants the attention of Parliament.
The mission of the Canadian Lung Association is to promote and improve lung health, and we've been doing that for over 100 years, 106 in Manitoba in particular. We really are concerned about this and think it's a really important issue. We're a non-profit health charity, and this is really all we focus on, because we believe that if you can't breathe, nothing else matters.
Because you know all about health, I'm sure you're aware of the inherent risks of tobacco use and the devastation that smoking can cause for the smoker, their loved ones, and the health-care system. As you know, tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in Canada, and it's also the main cause of lung disease. More than 100 Canadians will die today, tomorrow, and every day from diseases that are caused by smoking. We're talking about diseases like COPD and lung cancer.
I wish that we as an organization could recommend the use of these cigarettes as a safe alternative to smoking. I also wish that I could sit here today and recommend them as a safe smoking cessation aid. However, we have a role in Canada, and that role is to protect the lung health of Canadians. So we feel we should ensure that e-cigarettes do not cause any harm to users or to the people in their vicinity when they're using the product. We also feel, like the Cancer Society and the Heart and Stroke Foundation, that their use will undermine efforts to eliminate smoking in Canada.
Therefore, I'm here to talk to you about our concerns and our policy recommendations for e-cigarettes, both those with and without nicotine. In particular, our concerns focus on safety, current regulations and enforcement, uptake by youth, and the potential renormalization of smoking.
In terms of their safety, we don't really know if e-cigarettes are safe. There's been very limited testing of the toxicity of the product and and its emissions. In addition, because there's no regulation, the ingredients vary from product to product, as do the side-effects. There isn't enough information on the long-term health impacts of inhaling the vapour that e-cigarettes create or the effect of second-hand exposure. This is of particular concern to us, especially because some of the early studies coming out are showing that e-cigarettes actually can irritate the airways of some people that use them. It's also showing that they can have bad effects on people who have asthma. We feel strongly that Canadians really need to know about these risks, if they're going to be using e-cigarettes.
In terms of regulations and enforcement, we all know that e-cigarettes with nicotine are not allowed to be sold, but I can tell you that they are being sold in Winnipeg, where I work. We had a report the other day in one of our local newspapers saying that the reporter had gone into the shop, sat down with the owner, told him about what type of addiction they had to cigarettes, and they were given a specific e-cigarette to use with a specific amount of nicotine.