I couldn’t sit idle anymore so with the help of a letter from European Vapers that was submitted to the EU Parliament, and many, many other sources I have put together the following letter that was delivered just now to the Chair of the Joint Health and Safety Committee;
July 12, 2013
Kingston, Ontario
Dear Madame Chair,
I am writing to you in your capacity as Management Co-Chairperson of the MCB Joint Health and Safety Committee, as a former tobacco smoker who has quit smoking through the use of e-cigarettes.
For an estimated 350,000 people throughout Canada, e-cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes. They have enabled us to leave smoking behind, either on a full or part-time basis. These people are now smoking far fewer or, like me, no tobacco cigarettes at all. Figures from the United States show that in one year alone, Altria, the company behind cigarette brands like Malboro, saw a six and a half per cent decline in cigarette sales, directly attributed to a rise in the use of e-cigarettes. In Canada, RJ Reynolds and Imperial Tobacco are reporting similar losses, also being attributed to the rise of e-cigarette use. If e-cigarettes are allowed to continue to flourish, just imagine how many fewer tobacco cigarettes will be sold and lives saved as millions more people like me switch from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes.
However, I am genuinely concerned that the positive story of e-cigarettes is poorly understood and being misrepresented by “quit or die” advocates.
As you are aware, members of your committee are proposing to have your October 26, 2011 and February 27, 2013 Electronic Smoking Products directive’s definition of “workplace” interpreted as in the Ontario Health and Safety Act and not as it is defined in the Smoke-free Ontario Act. This would effectively ban e-cigarette use on any OPS property and treat e-cigarettes differently than tobacco cigarettes.
There has already been volumes of scientific data provided to the committee showing;
As you are aware, mountains of evidence exist about the harm of tobacco cigarettes. I submit to you that there is an alternative, one that has the potential of saving 45,000 people that die from cigarette tobacco use every year in Canada, according to Health Canada.
E-cigarettes are not a tobacco product and should not be regarded as such. The e-cigarettes that we use can already be regulated as a consumer product by a variety of legislations such as the “Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations, 2001”, and the “Canada Consumer Product Safety Act (CCPSA)” to name only a few existing regulations. There is no law that prohibits e-cigarettes. Nicotine is explicitly exempted from the “Food and Drug Regulations”. E-cigarettes are safer, by contrast to tobacco cigarettes which kill 45,000 people each and every year in Canada alone, yet neither Health Canada nor the Ontario Government is proposing to ban tobacco cigarettes!
The key health benefit of e-cigarettes is determined by how many smokers switch to them or use them as a staging post to quitting completely. It is therefore vital that e-cigarettes should be regulated as a consumer product so that they may be widely made available. Why are tobacco cigarettes so easily available?
Many smokers have tried numerous times to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes using conventional nicotine replacement therapies and have failed, myself included, however with e-cigarettes the success rate of cutting down smoking tobacco cigarettes or stopping completely far outstrips all other approved methods combined. Here is the peer reviewed evidence, []Vaping’ profiles and preferences: an online survey of electronic cigarette users - Dawkins - 2013 - Addiction - Wiley Online Library This is without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers have been quitting, switching, and cutting down through the use of e-cigarettes. This is something that should be celebrated … not a cause for concern.
In my opinion, e-cigarettes are not a form of more effective nicotine replacement therapy. They are an effective form of harm reduction. There is no doubt about the potential benefits, and it is clear that implementing Tobacco Harm Reduction strategies(THR) will have greater public health benefits than promoting further nicotine abstinence. Moreover, offering people a healthier choice that they prefer is clearly ethical, unlike coercive politics that have come to dominate the approach of the anti-smoking movement. E-cigarettes deliver clean nicotine;
Nicotine is not a carcinogen nor are any of the products found in an e-cigarette. Smoking a lit/burning tobacco cigarette is what delivers the 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke and at least 43 of them are carcinogenic to its user and bystanders.
In short, for people like us who switch from tobacco cigarettes, the evidence is overwhelming that e-cigarettes hugely reduce risk to the user and bystanders, while satisfying our need for nicotine and the social behavioural aspects of smoking.
I believe that making the informed choice of switching from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes has dramatically improved my health and my chances of living a longer, healthier life. I am not alone in this belief as is evident by the growing number of new users of e-cigarettes every day. With this in mind I would like to ask members of your committee this very simple question. Why would you want to intervene to prevent or obstruct a smoker having access to products that could potentially save his or her life? The reality is that every barrier placed in the way of e-cigarettes should be viewed in this light and with its consequences for health.
Does Management and its’ Unions really want to protect an industry that kills 45,000 Canadians a year at the expense of a market-based, consumer-led public health revolution that has the potential to save millions of lives worldwide?
E-cigarettes have the astonishing potential to disrupt the business model of the established tobacco industry. Health Canada and Pharmaceutical companies have not been able to reduce tobacco cigarette use below the 18% level in the last 12 years whereas e-cigarettes have the potential to do so in the next year (Chart: E-Cigarette Growth - Business Insider The 20% Prevalence Rule). However, rather than encouraging the use of a safer alternative to smokers, these proposals urged by your committee subject them to disproportionate and discriminatory regulation by misclassifying them, thus imposing restrictions, driving out innovation, and potentially destroying existing advocacy for a healthier alternative.
As a user of e-cigarettes, I urge members of your committee to reject the proposed definition of “workplace”. I believe it is poorly thought through, contains an arbitrary and pointless threshold, rather than designing appropriate regulation that encourages a harm reduction strategy (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3FU0iObJqKKZEhUZk1vMGF4b0k/edit?pli=1.)This proposal by your members has been prepared without proper consultation of users like me, the medical and scientific community and tobacco harm reduction advocates worldwide.
For the sake of all e-cigarette users and potential e-cigarette users, I respectfully urge members of your committee to insist that the JH&SC would be better served by focusing on other issues in the building and consider referring this issue to a higher authority who will look at all the options and only once it has done the necessary work, bring forward proposals, based in fact.
Yours sincerely,
SloHand
July 12, 2013
Kingston, Ontario
Dear Madame Chair,
I am writing to you in your capacity as Management Co-Chairperson of the MCB Joint Health and Safety Committee, as a former tobacco smoker who has quit smoking through the use of e-cigarettes.
For an estimated 350,000 people throughout Canada, e-cigarettes have and continue to provide a viable alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes. They have enabled us to leave smoking behind, either on a full or part-time basis. These people are now smoking far fewer or, like me, no tobacco cigarettes at all. Figures from the United States show that in one year alone, Altria, the company behind cigarette brands like Malboro, saw a six and a half per cent decline in cigarette sales, directly attributed to a rise in the use of e-cigarettes. In Canada, RJ Reynolds and Imperial Tobacco are reporting similar losses, also being attributed to the rise of e-cigarette use. If e-cigarettes are allowed to continue to flourish, just imagine how many fewer tobacco cigarettes will be sold and lives saved as millions more people like me switch from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes.
However, I am genuinely concerned that the positive story of e-cigarettes is poorly understood and being misrepresented by “quit or die” advocates.
As you are aware, members of your committee are proposing to have your October 26, 2011 and February 27, 2013 Electronic Smoking Products directive’s definition of “workplace” interpreted as in the Ontario Health and Safety Act and not as it is defined in the Smoke-free Ontario Act. This would effectively ban e-cigarette use on any OPS property and treat e-cigarettes differently than tobacco cigarettes.
There has already been volumes of scientific data provided to the committee showing;
- - that e-cigarettes are more effective in helping smokers reduce or even eliminating their dependency on tobacco than all other available nicotine replacement therapies combined, (PLOS ONE : accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed science)
- - that there are no hazardous chemicals in e-cigarettes, or any risk of exposure (OHS Case ID 02641GDQS40S conducted right here at MCB by the OLRB signed by your committee) ,
- - that there is no risk of second hand harm and that e-cigarettes pose no risk to the users or to bystanders (http://clearstream.flavourart.it/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CSA_ItaEng.pdf),
As you are aware, mountains of evidence exist about the harm of tobacco cigarettes. I submit to you that there is an alternative, one that has the potential of saving 45,000 people that die from cigarette tobacco use every year in Canada, according to Health Canada.
E-cigarettes are not a tobacco product and should not be regarded as such. The e-cigarettes that we use can already be regulated as a consumer product by a variety of legislations such as the “Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations, 2001”, and the “Canada Consumer Product Safety Act (CCPSA)” to name only a few existing regulations. There is no law that prohibits e-cigarettes. Nicotine is explicitly exempted from the “Food and Drug Regulations”. E-cigarettes are safer, by contrast to tobacco cigarettes which kill 45,000 people each and every year in Canada alone, yet neither Health Canada nor the Ontario Government is proposing to ban tobacco cigarettes!
The key health benefit of e-cigarettes is determined by how many smokers switch to them or use them as a staging post to quitting completely. It is therefore vital that e-cigarettes should be regulated as a consumer product so that they may be widely made available. Why are tobacco cigarettes so easily available?
Many smokers have tried numerous times to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes using conventional nicotine replacement therapies and have failed, myself included, however with e-cigarettes the success rate of cutting down smoking tobacco cigarettes or stopping completely far outstrips all other approved methods combined. Here is the peer reviewed evidence, []Vaping’ profiles and preferences: an online survey of electronic cigarette users - Dawkins - 2013 - Addiction - Wiley Online Library This is without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers have been quitting, switching, and cutting down through the use of e-cigarettes. This is something that should be celebrated … not a cause for concern.
In my opinion, e-cigarettes are not a form of more effective nicotine replacement therapy. They are an effective form of harm reduction. There is no doubt about the potential benefits, and it is clear that implementing Tobacco Harm Reduction strategies(THR) will have greater public health benefits than promoting further nicotine abstinence. Moreover, offering people a healthier choice that they prefer is clearly ethical, unlike coercive politics that have come to dominate the approach of the anti-smoking movement. E-cigarettes deliver clean nicotine;
- - without the tar, carbon monoxide, and volatile hot gases of cigarettes (http://clearstream.flavourart.it/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CSA_ItaEng.pdf)
- - and, as a way of consuming nicotine they are pretty near harmless to health.
Nicotine is not a carcinogen nor are any of the products found in an e-cigarette. Smoking a lit/burning tobacco cigarette is what delivers the 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke and at least 43 of them are carcinogenic to its user and bystanders.
In short, for people like us who switch from tobacco cigarettes, the evidence is overwhelming that e-cigarettes hugely reduce risk to the user and bystanders, while satisfying our need for nicotine and the social behavioural aspects of smoking.
I believe that making the informed choice of switching from smoking tobacco cigarettes to using e-cigarettes has dramatically improved my health and my chances of living a longer, healthier life. I am not alone in this belief as is evident by the growing number of new users of e-cigarettes every day. With this in mind I would like to ask members of your committee this very simple question. Why would you want to intervene to prevent or obstruct a smoker having access to products that could potentially save his or her life? The reality is that every barrier placed in the way of e-cigarettes should be viewed in this light and with its consequences for health.
Does Management and its’ Unions really want to protect an industry that kills 45,000 Canadians a year at the expense of a market-based, consumer-led public health revolution that has the potential to save millions of lives worldwide?
E-cigarettes have the astonishing potential to disrupt the business model of the established tobacco industry. Health Canada and Pharmaceutical companies have not been able to reduce tobacco cigarette use below the 18% level in the last 12 years whereas e-cigarettes have the potential to do so in the next year (Chart: E-Cigarette Growth - Business Insider The 20% Prevalence Rule). However, rather than encouraging the use of a safer alternative to smokers, these proposals urged by your committee subject them to disproportionate and discriminatory regulation by misclassifying them, thus imposing restrictions, driving out innovation, and potentially destroying existing advocacy for a healthier alternative.
As a user of e-cigarettes, I urge members of your committee to reject the proposed definition of “workplace”. I believe it is poorly thought through, contains an arbitrary and pointless threshold, rather than designing appropriate regulation that encourages a harm reduction strategy (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3FU0iObJqKKZEhUZk1vMGF4b0k/edit?pli=1.)This proposal by your members has been prepared without proper consultation of users like me, the medical and scientific community and tobacco harm reduction advocates worldwide.
For the sake of all e-cigarette users and potential e-cigarette users, I respectfully urge members of your committee to insist that the JH&SC would be better served by focusing on other issues in the building and consider referring this issue to a higher authority who will look at all the options and only once it has done the necessary work, bring forward proposals, based in fact.
Yours sincerely,
SloHand
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