Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I think I'm going to have to stop drinking coffee because it's addictive. I don't know what we can do. We can ban it, or something like that, and Coke and Pepsi and all of the other addictive drinks that our children drink that will cause them to get diseases like type 2 diabetes, etc.
I think that discussing addiction is about whether addiction is harmful, whether it causes you disease and illness, or whether that addiction, at the end of the day, has no effect on the rest of society or on your own particular health.
Given the fact that we've heard over and over that nicotine itself has an effect in terms of disease and harm done, in the same way as coffee.... I'm hearing that coffee has benefits to a lot of people. I think the important thing therefore is that you're talking about e-cigarettes as harm reduction in the same way that we use a patch and the gum, which are all legal things to use and are prescribed by physicians to use them. We hear that those harm reduction methods are not particularly effective.
Again I want to congratulate you, Dr. Bhatnagar. You and the earlier physician who presented to us gave us some facts we did not have before that I cannot refute—they come from reliable sources—about the benefits and the second-hand smoke issues, and all of those kinds of things. Given that I believe what you're saying about e-cigarettes, it may be worth using it as a harm reduction technique, an effective way to stop smoking, and an effective way to save lives, as we're hearing.
You're suggesting regulations, and I agree with you. Right now it's in a limbo world where anybody can sell it, anybody can buy it, and nobody knows what quality they're getting, either the industrial quality or the quality and potency of the nicotine, etc.
You've given us a list of the things that you believe should be put into regulations, i.e., sales to minors, advertising. I was told earlier on that we could use childproof bottles or vials for containing the nicotine.
What I wanted to ask you is this. Are you suggesting that this be treated as a consumer product or are you suggesting that it be a prescribed product? That's the first question I'd like to ask. Because I think that again is where it falls. Should it be prescribed by physicians in the same way that the gum and the other harm reduction techniques used for smoking cessation are? If so, how would you do that? Would it have to be a specialist in tobacco cessation? Would you do that? Or would your family doctor do it? Or could a nurse do it, if you're in a smoking cessation program?
I am convinced from all of the studies except the Polish study—and you can't just pick one study—that actually this does not cause “re-normalization of smoking”. My big question is, should it be sold behind the counter in a pharmacy? Or should it be given as a prescription?
Mr. Sweanor, I wanted to applaud when you finished. You gave some extremely graphic descriptions that I could just imagine—people grinding up coffee beans, and rolling it and smoking it, you know? I think you effectively made the point that it's the mode of transition that is the problem, not nicotine itself. When you take away all the tar, nicotine, formaldehyde, and all that kind of thing, you take away the harm that is being done by the drug.
Again, I just wanted to suggest to you, as a lawyer, whether you see pieces of legislation other than the ones we heard about, minors, etc., that you think would help.... Should there be warnings? Should there be any kind of thing sold with the cigarettes that you feel might help to make better public health legislation and public health policy?
Thank you.