Canada’s tabled national ban on vape flavours is now unlikely to be made law this year, according to health groups.
Just three months ago, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya’ara Saks vowed the restrictions were coming “soon.”
“I am seized with this,” she said at the time. “I don’t anticipate this is going to take much longer.”
But the federal government has now indicated the ban – which would outlaw all vape flavours except mint, menthol and tobacco – is firmly off the table at least for 2025.
Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said she and representatives from a number of anti-smoking organisations recently met with a senior staff member for Saks.
“We left the meeting with the firm belief that we are not going to see a ban on vaping flavours this year,” she said. “We are greatly disappointed.”
Flavoured vapes proven to help smokers quit
The backpedaling comes after a study published last week revealed more than two in three (68 per cent) Canadian smokers who successfully switched to vaping used flavours that are set to be banned.
The report, published in the science journal PubMed, found that one in five Canadian adults who tried to quit smoking between 2020 and 2022 used a vape to help them. The most popular flavour was fruit, which was chosen by 39.5 per cent of participants who took up vaping.
Government department Health Canada first announced its intention to restrict vape flavours back in June 2021, in a move it said was designed to curb a “rapid increase in youth vaping in Canada.”
“The availability of a variety of desirable flavours is believed to have contributed to the rise in youth vaping,” Health Canada said then, pointing to research that shows young people are more likely to start vaping with fruit and sweet flavours.
Fears of blackmarket trade
While the government has been consulting on a national flavour ban for almost four years, six provinces and territories have brought in their own flavour bans. These are New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, P.E.I., Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Quebec.
Last year Saks said the delay in national regulations was due to bans in these provinces, particularly Quebec, having led to a worrying rise in blackmarket trade. She said: “We’ve … seen in jurisdictions like Quebec, where banning of flavours has led to an illicit market that is accessible. So as we move forward with this, we want to make sure that we get it right.”
Now, the Liberal government has reportedly blamed the continued delay on a looming upcoming election.
Callard said: “We were told that this would not be one of the things that’s prioritised in the next few weeks.”
Meanwhile, Canada’s top public health doctors – including the chief medical health officers for Canada and the provinces and territories – have released a joint statement reiterating their call for the government to enact the flavour ban. It says they “remain significantly concerned by the continued high rates of nicotine vaping among Canadian youth.”
Ban ‘will happen,’ says government
In a statement to CBC News last week, Saks’ press secretary Yuval Daniel insisted that “vaping flavours are going to be restricted.”
“We need to get this right to avoid further endangering Canadians and putting youth at risk,” the statement added.
“A patchwork approach, or one that we cannot enforce properly, would not solve the problem or risk greater harms. In jurisdictions that have gone forward with a ban, we have seen [the] industry exploit grey areas for their own gain.”
A ban could ‘push vapers back to smoking’
However, the vaping industry in Canada has warned the ban could cause more harm than good by pushing adult vapers back to smoking.
Sam Tam, President of the Canadian Vaping Association, said: “Today, there are 1.9 million Canadian adults that are vaping instead of smoking, with 90 per cent relying on flavours beyond tobacco, mint and menthol.
“It is important to keep as many Canadians as possible from returning to cigarettes so Canada can meet its goal of a less than five per cent smoking rate by 2035.
“We must stop the misinformation that flavour bans are the only solution to stop youth from vaping, when this product is age restricted to adults. We need stronger enforcement to raise the level of compliance, not bans.”
