Bravo Zulu, Doug Ford.

“The government will work with the public, experts, and businesses to re-examine the evidence related to vaping as a smoking cessation tool to ensure that any changes are in the best interests of everyone and protect Ontarians’ health and safety,” he said in a statement.

The NGO’s, tobacco companies and pharmaceuticals can piss-off with their fear mongering about vaping and nicotine in and of itself. The last thing they want is to actually look at data. That it’s as bad for you as sitting on a patio on the street is not something they want thought about. That using nicotine, without the combustion, is as deadly as coffee is not the narrative they want out in the general public.

Randy Hillier requests your help in removing vaping regulations from Ontario’s Bill 174.

Under schedule 3 of Bill 174 – Cannabis, Smoke-Free Ontario and Road Safety Statute Law Amendment Act, 2017, vape shops will be prohibited from displaying vape devices, components or juices, allowing their customers to handle vape products, or test flavours before purchase. This bill places further restrictions on areas of use, and where exemptions are made, those using vape products are forced to share spaces with those using traditional tobacco products.

Via, Colonialista

People advocating the equivalency of smoking and vaping in law are trying to kill smokers.

Chris Bullen, who authored an accompanying editorial , said although the long-term safety of e-cigarettes is unclear, any ill effects are “likely to be rare compared with the harms of continuing to smoke.”
The latest results strongly suggest that more lenient control of e-cigarettes could improve population health, said Bullen, a professor of public health at the University of Auckland.
“If every smoker was to change over to e-cigarettes completely, there would be a dramatic and almost immediate public health benefit,” he said in an email.

Vapers have been screaming this for years now.

Via Instapundit we find out that San Francisco is going to ban the sales of flavoured e-liquid.
Yes, the do-gooders are all about killing people. Is it cool to be a fog machine on the bus? No. In the restaurant? No. Should it be restricted to over 18? Yes. Is it a gateway to smoking? No study has ever shown that.
Why is it the same side of the political spectrum calls me a ‘denier’ for questioning the veracity of magic 8-ball computer models and yet gleefully ignores all of the real actual science when it comes to electronic nicotine?
From the link:

Three years, three months smoke free because of vaping.

Bill S-5, “An Act to amend the Tobacco Act and the Non-smokers’ Health Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts” is a Senate Bill to regulate vaping products, retailers and manufacturers.
It’ll effectively kill conventions, enforces strict labelling, prohibits the inter-province mail of vaping devices (tobacco products), thankfully doesn’t seem to prohibit mailing of base juice and flavours (vaping products) and carries the same penalties for the sale of juice and products to youth as cigarettes.
This bothers me greatly:

Flavours
30.‍48 (1) No person shall promote a vaping product set out in column 2 of Schedule 3, including by means of the packaging, through an indication or illustration, including a brand element, that could cause a person to believe that the product has a flavour set out in column 1.
Prohibition -- sale
(2) No person shall sell a vaping product set out in column 2 of Schedule 3 if an indication or illustration referred to in subsection (1) is displayed on the product or on its package.
Amendment of Schedule 3
30.‍49 (1) The Governor in Council may, by order, amend Schedule 3 by adding, amending or deleting
(a) the name or description of a flavour or vaping product; or
(b) a reference to all vaping products, with or without exceptions.

And Schedule 3 consists of: Confectionery, Dessert, Cannabis, Soft drink, Energy drink
My go to flavours are coffee, licorice, “rainbow candy” (Skittles like) and cheesecake flavours. Does “through an indication or illustration” mean plain text, or just a picture of a cola bottle?

I won’t demonize legislation sight unseen, but I also won’t be surprised if whatever the Liberals propose is punitive, restrictive and ill-advised.

Holly Nicholas looks at Ontario’s restrictive vaping laws and compares the crack-down to the fervour for the so-called safe-injection sites.

Course it won’t stop the nannies from trying hard to look after you for your own good.

Levy and his colleagues report research in the U.S., Canada and England, that shows cigarette smoking rates have fallen more in the last two years than they have in the previous four or five years and that this trend has coincided with the increase in e-cigarette use. “While e-cigarettes may act as a gateway to smoking, much of the evidence indicates that e-cigarette use encourages cessation from cigarettes by those people who would have otherwise smoked with or without e-cigarettes,” Levy says.

Britain’s drug regulators have given the go-ahead for a British American Tobacco electronic-cigarette vaping device to be sold as a quit smoking medicine, the first such product to be given a drug license in the UK.
This while more and more jurisdictions in Canada are swayed by uninformed fears of nicotine (as opposed to smoke) and the professional shysters representing the anti-smoking zealots. Looking at you City of Saskatoon council.
One might come to the conclusion that the Canadian jurisdictions want smokers to die, instead of helping them break the smoking habit.
h/t Karen

The Government of the UK’s Public Health England has released a land-mark study on the risks and benefits of electronic nicotine delivery.

e-cigarettes have the potential to help smokers quit smoking, and the evidence indicates they carry a fraction of the risk of smoking cigarettes but are not risk free

PHE’s ambition is to secure a tobacco-free generation by 2025. Based on the evidence, we believe e-cigarettes have the potential to make a significant contribution to the endgame for tobacco.

provide the public with clear and accurate information on the relative harm of nicotine, e-cigarettes and smoked tobacco. Nearly half the population don’t realise e-cigarettes are safer than smoking, and studies have shown that some smokers have avoided switching in the belief that e-cigarettes are too dangerous

What does this tell me? It tells me that everyone wanting to restrict my access to these now proven and UK accredited devices is trying to kill me.

Key findings of the review include:
– the current best estimate is that e-cigarettes are around 95% less harmful than smoking
– nearly half the population (44.8%) don’t realise e-cigarettes are much less harmful than smoking
– there is no evidence so far that e-cigarettes are acting as a route into smoking for children or non-smokers

Press release

The all-party House of Commons’ health committee has released their report on electronic nicotine delivery. Not a bad report. I am left feeling a bit uneasy about the potential regulations regarding flavouring. However I do notice my local juice shop has already moved away from naming some of their flavours after popular candies.
The Nat. Post story.
Of course, reason escapes the power-hungry killers in Ontario and the left coast.
So, here’s hoping that a conservative approach will be in the works for any tabled national regulation.
1 year, 1 month cigarette free because of vaping, thank you.

Two pieces of news recently released. First, well, what do you know, e-cigarettes help you quit. This backs up this this Canadian study.

Among daily vapers, three quarters said they were still smokers (regular or not), while the other quarter was made up of ex-smokers.

Now, for those worried about e-cigarette use by non-smokers, can you add those percentages up for me?
Second, it seems that e-cigarette vapour is about as dangerous as air.

Analysis of the smoke from conventional cigarettes showed that the mainstream cigarette smoke delivered approximately 1500 times more harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs) tested when compared to e-cigarette aerosol or to puffing room air. The deliveries of HPHCs tested for these e-cigarette products were similar to the study air blanks rather than to deliveries from conventional cigarettes; no significant contribution of cigarette smoke HPHCs from any of the compound classes tested was found for the e-cigarettes. Thus, the results of this study support previous researchers’ discussion of e-cigarette products’ potential for reduced exposure compared to cigarette smoke.

Via, WackedOut Canada.

Dr. Derek Yach, a former professor of global health at Yale, who developed the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, comes out strongly in favour of electronic nicotine delivery and strongly against bans.
Commentary on the article strongly asserts that ‘Big Pharma’, anti-smoking advocates and Big Tobacco are working hand in hand against e-cigs to maintain the status quo, rather than help smokers quit.
Via, WackedOut Canada
I have said it here before, but it bears repeating. I am exactly 51 weeks cigarette free because of vaping. I previously tried the drugs, the gum, the patch, and cold turkey, all but the drugs multiple times. E-Cigs were the tool that allowed me to stop, completely, without any major cravings. I started at the highest available nicotine level (18/24 mg/ml) and I vaped like a chimney for the first month. It was rarely out of my hand and I burnt through a pile of atomizers. But now…now I’m down to 12 mg/ml strength, vape much less and don’t really feel it necessary to reduce the nicotine further.
I can not stress how much I feel that these tools helped me quit smoking.

Les MacPherson:

Barrette is Quebec’s minister of health and also a medical doctor. His specialty is radiology, so he would know better than most about the value of an alternative to smoking.
“It really works,” he said in an interview with the CBC. “If you speak with doctors in the field, it’s what we can call a breakthrough.”

The CBC interview in question.

Never the twain shall meet. Minister Ambrose,call your Standing Committee on Health.

There is now a sufficient body of evidence available on several aspects and effects of EC for recent reviews to conclude that health care professionals and public health bodies should encourage smokers who cannot stop smoking using available treatments, or do not want to do so, to switch to EC [2],[3].

Emerging trends are as expected. In the UK where EC are available and taken up by sufficient numbers of smokers, quit rates are increasing and decline in smoking, especially among young people, is accelerating [19]-[21].

Via, Taste Your Juice