Skip to Content Subscribe Our Offers My Account Manage My Subscriptions FAQ Newsletters Canada Canadian True Crime Canadian Politics Health World Israel & Middle East Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Comics NP News Quiz New York Times Crossword Horoscopes Life Eating & Drinking Style Sponsored Play for Ontario Travel Travel Canada Travel USA Travel International Cruises Travel Essentials Culture Books Celebrity Movies Music Theatre Television Business Essentials Advice Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Buy Canadian Home Living Outdoor Living Kitchen & Dining Tech Style & Beauty Personal Care Entertainment & Hobbies Gift Guide Travel Guide Amazon Prime Day Deals Savings National Post Store More Sports Hockey Baseball Basketball Football Soccer Golf Tennis Driving Vehicle Research Reviews News Gear Guide Obituaries Place an Obituary Place an In Memoriam Classifieds Place an Ad Celebrations Working Business Ads Archives Healthing Epaper Manage Print Subscription Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ Newsletters Canada World Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Life Shopping Epaper Manage Print Subscription HomeNP CommentDavid Clement: Banning flavoured vapes harms adults and does little for youthGlobe and Mail editorial overlooked contradictory evidenceLast updated 15 hours ago You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.vapingFive years is a very long time to announce a policy and not implement it, but Ottawa’s promised ban on flavoured vapes has now outlasted a health minister, a pandemic, and several news cycles’ worth of moral alarm. The Globe and Mail weighed in with an editorial on Monday insisting that the government’s stalling has gone on far too long. The case leans on frightening figures about the young, warnings that vaping leads kids to smoking, and a study of secret shoppers said to prove retailers cannot be trusted. It is, on its face, an argument built to alarm rather than to inform, and it collapses the moment one bothers to check the footnotes.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorTake the editorial’s opening point, that 14 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 19 report having vaped in the last 30 days. This happens to be true and it comes straight from the 2022 Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey, courtesy of Health Canada itself. But that figure may not be as alarming as we are being led to believe, given that Health Canada’s own data describe youth vaping for that cohort as essentially flat since 2019. The trend line being flat for a cohort that includes adults (18+) is a curious way to argue that the sky is falling and that a ban is necessary.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThe Globe, whether it is intentional or not, failed to check Health Canada’s own tracking of the age group the ban actually targets, which is youth aged 12-to-17. That data paints a drastically different picture.By 2024, from its peak in 2019, the number of youth in that age bracket who had vaped in the last 30 days had fallen by more than 60 per cent, to six per cent. Cigarette smoking among teenagers hasn’t just declined as well, it’s plummeted. Just four per cent of 15-to-19-year-olds report smoking at all, with daily smoking among Canadian youth in that same age bracket sitting at less than two per cent. If every daily-smoking Canadian teenager turned up at once, according to Health Canada’s own illustration, an NHL arena would not be half full.This is the point at which the “gateway theory” quickly evaporates because if vaping caused smoking, the smoking rate should have increased dramatically as, and after, vaping peaked in 2019. Instead both have been falling in tandem, which is cause for celebration for anyone who actually cares about the issue of youth access.The Globe editorial also fails to mention what vape flavours actually do for the adult smoker, which is the primary justification for vaping products to exist in the first place. A 2023 American study of nearly 70,000 adult vapers, published in Harm Reduction Journal, found that those using flavoured e-cigarettes had more than double the odds of quitting smoking outright compared with those who stuck to tobacco flavour, and that fruit was the flavour most often used at the moment they quit smoking. Strip away the flavours and you strip away, for many smokers, the one thing that made quitting bearable and successful.Then there is the Alberta secret-shopper study, which found that 42.5 per cent of vendors would sell a vape to a minor. This is a genuine problem, but it is so obviously a problem of enforcement and it also happens to be a problem with a rather easy cure. Mystery-shop programs paired with feedback to retailers have pushed alcohol ID-check compliance from 80 per cent up to 94 per cent in just 15 months in four U.S. states, according to a 2018 study. A 2012 study fround similar checks on tobacco sellers have lifted compliance from the mid-50s to 85 per cent over 10 months in three U.S. states. Repeat visits, fines with actual teeth for repeat offenders, and the threat of a revoked licence close most of the remaining gap. This is a far more serious policy than banning the product and hoping the problem disappears along with it.And here is the question Globe declines to ask: what fills the gap when flavours vanish from the legal market, given what we know about the “success” of prohibition in the past?Nova Scotia‘s flavour ban took effect in 2020, and the Canadian Vaping Association stated that within six weeks that the province’s vape shops, the retail channel with a legal duty to check ID, were closing by the dozen, with purchases potentially diverted to the black market or adult smokers pushed back to cigarettes. Nova Scotia’s own Public Accounts showed a return to smoking in real time with a 5.6 per cent increase in cigarette consumption in the ban’s first fiscal year. Massachusetts banned flavoured vapes and illegal vape seizures by the state’s own task force rose from 71,746 units in 2022 to 308,100 in 2024.Australia went further, banning flavours and restricting vapes to pharmacies and requiring a prescription. The results were predictably disastrous. Legal pharmacy sales now account for roughly one in every 1,700 vape transactions in the country, and its own drug regulator estimates that 10 million illicit vapes change hands every month. According to a government survey, 87 per cent of Australians who still vape now source the product illegally, from sellers who ask for no identification, pay no tax, and have no licence to lose.None of this is to say the ban’s supporters aren’t right to be concerned about youth access to vaping products. Nicotine addiction in a developing brain poses a real harm, and nobody is arguing that minors ought to be vaping at all. But there is a difference between addressing a genuine concern and reaching, reflexively, for the blunt instrument of prohibition. Youth vaping is already falling sharply under the current arrangement, flavours and all, showing that we need consistent enforcement of rules that already exist.All that is needed is age verification with penalties that actually deter, retailers kept open and properly policed, and flavours kept available for the adults who rely on them to stay off cigarettes for good. Health Canada would do a lot more good chasing retailers caught breaking existing rules than pushing a ban that will hand the market, gift-wrapped, to illegal actors who have never once asked a teenager for ID.David Clement is the Policy Director at the Consumer Choice Center. Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.