Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for this opportunity to express my views and the facts on e-cigarettes.
It's an honour to be invited here for the first time by the committee and to have the opportunity to offer another perspective on vaping. I'm so proud of the committee for investigating what I believe to be a better, less harmful alternative for adults who choose nicotine.
What we must understand here is that vaping is an entirely new product category, industry, and culture. This simple and effective technology offers the nearly 13 million Canadian ever-smokers—current and former smokers combined—a less harmful choice when choosing nicotine. There are already volumes of data from the millions of online comments and studies conducted since 2003, data that render vaping into a health category similar to that of a cup of coffee.
In regard to understanding the term “e-cigarettes”, where the initial confusion really started is with the word “e-cigarettes”, which leads one to believe that the device is emitting smoke. However, it's not smoke but vapour. The word “e-cigarette” can often serve to mislead the public: that it is a new variation of a cigarette. Just as electric cars produce less harm to the environment, vaporizing technology produces less harm to the user and to the environment around them.
We really have to look at combustion versus vaporization, because these are two completely different processes. Combustion is a high-temperature, exothermic chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant, whereas evaporation is a phased transition from the liquid phase to a vapour. It produces a non-toxic vapour with a pleasant odour.
With respect to looking at our harm reduction benefits, when we're looking at smoking tobacco in public we have three major ways that it's harmful: direct harm, as smoking tobacco is directly harmful; indirect harm, which is directly harmful to the bystanders; and in regard to role models, which means that young people who see smoking can believe that this is a normal adult activity, and it may influence them to smoke themselves.
On the other hand, vapour liquid in public is non-harmful in at least three major ways: in direct vaping, properly made liquids are directly non-harmful to the user compared to cigarette usage; indirectly, the vapour is not a constant, like smoke, and as well, the exhaled vapour is not harmful to bystanders; and with respect to role models, young people who see vaping can be educated on the product and nicotine delivery options and believe that it is not okay to be smoking.
Vaporizers are not the same as cigarettes, period.
When looking at the culture, it's critical to have a thorough understanding of the culture and the small businesses that have developed vaping in Canada. Vaping culture is not about a multi-billion dollar stronghold on addiction. Vaping culture is anti-smoking. When someone chooses to vape, they do not simply go for a vape or design their lives around vaping, as they might with a cigarette. Vaping culture rejects wholeheartedly the habits of smoking and therefore cannot contribute to smoking renormalization.
Again, as Mr. David was stating, there are four to five main ingredients in vapour liquid. Most of these ingredients have been proven to not be harmful. Delivering nicotine is very low risk and has not been clearly shown to cause any disease. Nicotine has been shown to have many health-related benefits. It can be presented in any strength, ranging from 1 mg to 24 mg—milligrams—and a comparison of the amount of nicotine delivered in 10 puffs of vapour shows that it is the equivalent of one puff of a traditional cigarette.
The whole problem with nicotine is that it happens to be found in cigarettes. People can't disassociate the two in their minds. Nicotine has benefits, if anything, and may actually have an anti-oxidant effect. One of the functions of nicotine receptors is to moderate the entry of calcium into cells. The presence of nicotine increases the amount of intracellular calcium, which appears to improve cellular survival. When it comes to dosage levels and nicotine, Health Canada clearly indicates that nicotine is not considered a drug since it is in a form to be administered orally by the means of an inhaler delivering four milligrams or less of nicotine per dosage unit. This is quite standard knowledge, especially out there on the Internet.
When it comes to productive vaping regulations around the world, we have to look at Germany, the Netherlands, and even Heathrow Airport, which permits the use of electronic cigarettes within its premises. The pro here is the ability to align with businesses and track them, with equal cooperation from vaping companies, so everyone is on the same page for distributing these product choices safely to consumers. As Australia does, we should discourage smoking and encourage vaping.
When it comes to contrary vaping regulations around the world, we can look at the U.S., Singapore, and New Zealand. The foundation of those regulations is a grouping of vaping with tobacco or a pharmaceutical product, which causes vaping to be restricted to only two options. This shuts down cooperation with vaping companies and eliminates the possibility of providing a less harmful choice to adult Canadians.
We really need to have a plan. We need to have a plan to understand and support the choice of lesser harm, the choice of vaping in Canada. We need to encourage our cities to support vaping by providing unbiased education so adults can make their own decisions. Grouping vaping with tobacco is counterproductive to lessening the harm of cigarettes.
In conclusion, I have a few solutions. We're looking at vaping as a consumer chemical product that provides adults with hundreds of options and can provide a significantly better option for Canadians. There is no significant risk apparent to either the direct user or to bystanders. The closest comparison I have come up with when doing my research is to coffee and its range of flavoured coffee options available in different strengths.
I have a number of suggested solutions: the creation of vapour company registration to track the products and stores and to lay the framework for labelling and nicotine indication; proper bottling using LDPE or glass bottles with childproof and tamper-proof caps; age restriction with advertising guidelines; the creation of an online forum such as, perhaps, vaper.gc.ca, to register a vaping company; and the publishing of an official registered vaping company directory, which the public can see, to ensure that quality guidelines are met and that approved products are supplied by registered vaping companies in Canada.
I want to close with one quote from Professor Gerry Stimson, who is a professor at Imperial College London. He said:
If the WHO gets its way and extinguishes e-cigarettes, it will not only have passed up what is clearly one of the biggest public health innovations of the last three decades that could potentially save millions of lives, but it will have abrogated its own responsibility under its own charter to empower consumers to take control of their own health, something which they are already doing themselves in their millions.
Now that a lesser-harm option is available, why can't we offer this product choice to adult consumers? Why wouldn't we do the best we can in order to provide that choice?
We thank the committee for its time and consideration. We are pleased to answer any questions about vaping and the benefits to the health of Canadians in this exciting time.
Thank you.