Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech on preventing youth from starting to use tobacco products and stopping them from developing addictions and possibly dying from tobacco-related illness.
However, his speech seemed somewhat ambivalent to me. He acknowledged that prevention can keep youth from taking up smoking, yet in 2015, we saw an increase in the number of youth who had started smoking. Almost four million teens between the ages of 15 and 19 had already tried an electronic cigarette once.
Does my colleague not think it is past time we implemented this bill? That would help reduce vaping and smoking among youth, because there would be plain-packaging regulations.
Of course, we could go even further than what the bill proposes. We could follow France in banning all positive depictions of smoking. This bill does not yet include such a provision, but it is a good start, at least.
In 2015, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health released a report with 14 recommendations, including one to establish a legislative framework for regulating vaping products. There has already been a study, yet a new study is being done. Does my colleague not think it is time to start implementing all of these recommendations to reduce the number of young people who will start using tobacco products and save them from the inevitable disease and death?