I worked in Parliament in 1985 when we passed the first Tobacco Products Control Act, and that was amended, was passed again, in 1997 after being defeated. Then it was amended in 2018 and became the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act. That change reflected the fact that, all of a sudden, vaping products were sold—at that time illegally and for a long time illegally. It legalized, essentially, a grey market.
However, tobacco companies continued to evolve the products they sell. As my friend Flory pointed out, smoking rates have fallen. In 1989, when the first law was passed, half of Canadians smoked cigarettes. Now we've made a lot of progress, and it's down to about 12% or 13%. Tobacco companies have found that they no longer can get kids to smoke cigarettes, so they've looked for other products. It's just taken a long time to get laws to reflect what the market really looks like.
We started seeing vaping products on the market around 2009. It wasn't until 2018, until after this committee had hearings on it, and until after a long delay, a few ministers and a few different stripes of governments—it took nine years before we got a law that way. Those of us who've been in this game for a while know that it takes a long time to get new laws in place. We're not talking about, you know, one year or two years. It takes a lot longer than that.
As my friend pointed out, governments have just not been able to catch up to the industry, so we really need a deep think about what we're going to do, what types of nicotine we tolerate the use of, what types we encourage the use of, what types we discourage the use of and what types we forbid.
That's a difficult question. I'm sorry to take up your time.