Thank you very much.
I would like to thank the HESA committee for inviting us today. My name is Dave Jones, and I am a retired military officer. I smoked throughout my whole 40-year career, and thought I would die with a cigarette in my mouth. I'm one of those anecdotes that you hear about and that no one thinks is real, like the unicorn, but I'm here. I am now 18 months free of tobacco cigarettes, and I use a personal vaporizer.
On a personal note, my health has improved. My cardiologist, GP, and dentist are very supportive of my vaping. My story is just one of thousands of other vapers in Canada.
I am also one of four unpaid volunteer directors with the Tobacco Harm Reduction Association of Canada, a non-profit organization. We are a national Canadian vaping consumer and vendor advocacy group with extensive links to Canadian vaping groups across Canada, the U.S., and Europe.
Canadian vapers, as the consumers of this product, have been waiting to have our say on this very important public health issue facing Canada. I would state that smoking and cigarettes are the main issue, as is this: how can we support getting smokers to switch to a safer alternative, or quit safely, to alleviate the 37,000 deaths attributed to smoking each year?
There are an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 vapers. We are a grassroots movement and growing in Canada, out of about five million smokers. Methods to stop smoking vary from NRTs to cold turkey and now electronic cigarettes as an alternative to smoking. The method that one uses to stop smoking is a personal choice that should be supported and not discriminated against just because we may or may not use nicotine.
The vapers we have talked to have expressed their frustration that e-cigarettes aren't being embraced by the tobacco control community, public health organizations, and political institutions even though they are much less harmful than combustible cigarettes. We need to ensure that public health gains and benefits are balanced with the possible risks associated with electronic cigarettes. We have an opportunity to replace tobacco smoking with a safe alternative. If we put too many onerous regulations and use invalid assumptions on this tobacco harm reduction strategy, we may lose a golden public health opportunity. Ideology, rhetoric, and invalid assumptions cannot be used to make sound regulations in policy. Regulations must be based on valid, truthful, scientific facts and be evidence-based to ensure that we have safe products and usable regulations and policies that benefit all Canadians.
Cigarettes have 4,000-plus chemicals and 70 known carcinogens. Electronic cigarettes have four to five chemicals and no carcinogens that we know of. Electronic cigarettes are not combustible cigarettes. Vapour is not second-hand smoke, and nicotine is not tobacco. Smokers smoke cigarettes for the nicotine but die from the smoke and tar. We do support and want regulations.
I'd now like to give a quick overview in terms of a presentation. Please bear with me, as I was just told yesterday that I had to give this.
Personal vaporizers are not smoking cessation devices. They are a safe alternative to smoking that can be used for cessation by the vaper. The use of electronic cigarettes, the act of vaping, is not smoking. The use of nicotine outside of tobacco has never been considered smoking. Vapour is not smoke and not any source of second-hand smoke.
There are 5.6 million smokers in Canada, and we have 37,000 deaths Canada-wide. We have 350,000 vapers in Canada, with approximately 10 million vapers worldwide. Big tobacco and big pharma profits are decreasing. Youth and adult smoking is decreasing because of many factors; one is vaping. Using NRTs is not great, with a relapse rate of 95%. There is a need for support of vaping and a new approach to public health goals of getting smokers to quit—the quit-or-die approach. Public health says there is not enough information, but we have over 200 studies released and more every day. Do not cherry-pick to suit an agenda. Can we wait for conclusivity? Can we wait for 20 years while Canadian smokers die?
I have 10 items that I would like to touch on in terms of recommendations.
The first item is youth gateway. Of course there is a big concern about the youth gateway to smoking in the use of electronic cigarettes. We are also parents. We are also grandparents. We understand that there is a concern about this. However, when you look at the youth who are trying e-cigarettes, no survey has shown that they go to smoking.
We have record lows of youth smoking in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., and it has been declining yearly. We are very glad about that because we do not want to see our youth smoking.
Some of the results we have seen, though, is that many e-cigarette users or youth users were already smokers. There have also been reports in terms of the surveys that negligible youth or adult non-smokers using or trying e-cigarettes have gone to smoking. You must remember that trying and continuous use are not the same as smoking.
These are our recommendations:
Youth age bans on e-cigarettes must be implemented immediately. Advertising should be limited to smoking for adult use. I sent the U.K. CAP advertising rules that were adopted in the U.K. just last month to this committee. I won't go over all the aspects of that.
We should also promote education on e-cigarettes to everyone and the development of a youth-adult monthly tool survey kit with better questions for our youth. The U.K. uses this on a monthly basis, so it has monthly data to better serve and understand what the trends are.
We should have close monitoring of smoking uptake and modify regulations accordingly if there is an uptake.
What is in e-liquids? It's propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, food flavourings, and possibly optional nicotine. Nicotine is the ingredient smokers crave in tobacco. People smoke for the nicotine but die from the smoke and tar. Nicotine is also found in vegetables. It is used in all NRT cessation products, but as somebody said, most vapours decrease levels. I personally started at 24 and now I'm down to 9. Actually, I'm down to 6. We find in a lot of cases that we decrease levels as we continue to vape, and a lot of people go down to zero but still use vaping as a habit.
The question whether we need to set a limit. Most people start out on 24 milligrams if they are a heavy smoker. That is something that has to be determined as a personal choice. In the U.K. they capped it at 20 milligrams, but a lot of people over there are heavy smokers so there is possibly a problem that these smokers may not switch because of that. I'd like to note that the EUTPD, European Union tobacco product directive, is being legally challenged at this time in that specific area.
The sale of bottled e-liquids to consumers must be allowed with defined regulations in place. We agree. We need to have regulations on the nicotine and the selling of nicotine in the form of e-liquids. These things need regulations. They also need to have the proper labels and warnings.
We also must establish and actively enforce consumer standards for electronic cigarettes themselves. Cartridges, tanks, and e-liquids are consumer products that need to have consumer regulations.
Why we haven't touched upon nicotine poisonings, I'm not sure, but we do hear a lot about nicotine poisonings, especially with youth, and we are very concerned about that. In Canada it hasn't been reported much; however, we do know there is some out there. In the U.S. there are quite a number of reports, 2,700, but out of 2.2 million calls it is 2,700 calls.
Our recommendations are that we need to educate the vapers using e-liquids to be safety conscious, just like for any other product that we use in the house. The sale of bottled e-liquids to consumers must be allowed with defined regulations in place, addressing manufacturing and labelling to provide a safe and secure product. I believe that is being self-regulated right now, but we do definitely need that.
Poisoning reports should contain reasons for the contact and follow-up actions to be taken. At this time they are reported to provincial poison control centres and then to Health Canada. If there is a problem, they should also be sent to ECTA, the Electronic Cigarette Trade Association, which is the industry regulator, so that from an industry point of view we can actually make changes if it's an industry problem.
On item 4, flavours, we have done surveys on this—fruits, sweets, tobacco, drinks, and beverages. I personally use fruits as my flavour.