Sales, advertising of vaping products need to be controlled
The Simcoe Muskoka Board of Health is writing to the federal and provincial governments with a call to introduce stringent restrictions on the display and promotion of vaping products, and to ban flavoured e-cigarettes outright.
Medical Officer of Health Dr. Charles Gardner said while the vaping industry claims that e-cigarettes can help with tobacco cessation, marketing appears to be intensely focused on recruiting youth.
The number of youth in Simcoe and Muskoka using the products has risen by 74 per cent from 2017 to 2018 (jumping to 14.6 per cent from 8.4 per cent). This has been associated with the first increase in youth smoking seen in decades.
Schools have also been struggling with vaping among students during class or on school property. With more than 500 reported cases and seven deaths from acute severe lung disease associated with vape products in youth in the United States, and one case now reported by the Medical Officer of Health in London, the board agreed there is an urgent need to prohibit the marketing that has led to this tremendous increase in youth vaping.
The letter prepared by the board emphasized that the same restrictions on tobacco sales and marketing should apply to vape products.
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It is really a shame how vaping has been vilified in the media will an abundance of things being said with no statistics to back them up or counter statistics that would show the real relevance of these products. When something goes up in most cases something goes down. Are some of the youth vaping that might have turned to tobacco? I am not promoting vaping to the youth but it may be possible that at least some of the kids that are vaping are better off? If in the end vaping is totally banned from the youth they will just turn to tobacco, it is really a no brainer. If you force all vapours to use tobacco flavoured products then they will have no problem switching to the real thing as the flavour of tobacco is not the most pleasant thing. Myself, my son, and a few close friends all kicked tobacco with flavoured vape products, the last thing I wanted to use was tobacco flavoured liquid who would, you are trying to get away from it. The trouble with everyone that gets on the hate bandwagon is they rarely ever think it through. You may be doing more harm then good. Would you sleep well at night knowing you forced a kid to turn to tobacco then die of lung cancer, maybe not? When you take away options there are always consequences.