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Some Extremely Poor Advice

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kingcobra

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So I've read a few posts lately on the topic of Health Canada's looking to meddle into our lives, and I know all of this has been talked about at great length here in the past, but I just feel like smacking these people around again.

So here's what they had to say to us a while back:
"Health Canada is advising Canadians not to purchase or use electronic smoking products, as these products may pose health risks and have not been fully evaluated for safety, quality and efficacy by Health Canada."

Clearly we are dealing with idiots here. So what they are saying is, in effect, that they do not advise people to substitute the smoking of cigarettes because they have not bothered to fully evaluate the safety of them. However, they very obviously have evaluated the safety of the products that these people currently use, which is smoking tobacco.

Does anyone seriously think that vaping could possibly present more health risks than smoking tobacco? Is vaping really all that different from nicotine inhalers which they have no problem with?

The main problem here would appear to be that they are confused about the relative nature of this question. It truly is smoking versus vaping here. So if someone who had never smoked were to look to HC to recommend whether they do this or not, then it would make sense for HC to say to them, well we don't recommend it because we haven't evaluated the risks (and have no interest in doing so).

If someone who smoked tobacco asked them whether they should consider vaping instead, which in reality is always the case, then the answer needs to be a different one. So they need to rework this statement:

Health Canada has not evaluated the safety of electronic cigarettes, so those who choose to use them do so at their own risk and without our specific recommendation. However, there is good reason to believe that they may be far less harmful than tobacco smoking, as has been found to be the case with other nicotine replacement therapies.

Perhaps if and when e-cigarette companies provide us with a lot of funds, otherwise known as bribes, we will change our position here, unless of course we encounter another whistle blower like we did with the case of our approving hormones being given to cows causing pus in our milk, which we had to rethink when the large sum of money we were given by the company seeking approval was made public.

We wish to also state that just because we are called Health Canada, our mandate is clearly not to protect the health interests of Canadians, but to instead promote the efficient commerce of those companies whose interests we are concerned with. This is why, for example, we promote toxic waste such as fluoride in our water, and even recommend it be given to babies, in spite of the clear scientific evidence pointing to its harmfulness.

So we're not concerned about safety at all, to be perfectly honest, we only care about protecting the interests of big business. So we are very eager to ban certain supplements, for instance, which have been approved by the FDA, as that means that big pharma has been even more effective up here in lobbying us to keep people unhealthy and keep them on their expensive drugs.

So go ahead and continue to smoke, which is the patriotic thing to do as a Canadian, since you are supporting our government, and also saving us money in health care costs as well by dying off sooner. If your lobby, the e-cigarette market., can ever come up with the grist money that the big boys pay, well perhaps then we will consider allowing your merchandise to be sold in stores, provided that they are mass marketed, low quality, and heavily taxed. Don't cross your fingers on this one though.



 

MisterMike

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I crunched a few hypothetical figures a while back (based on daily tobacco tax revenue of $3.50 per smoker, fairly conservative seeing as roughly 70 percent of the price of a pack of smokes is tax) and found that if one sixth of all Canadian smokers converted to vaping, that would represent a shortfall in the Government's coffers of around $1.2 billion per year.

A quick Google reveals that approximately $4.4 billion is spent per year on health-care for smoking-related illnesses in Canada. Not sure how reliable that figure is, but it came from an Alberta Health Services anti-smoking bulletin. (Smoking | Health Information | Alberta Health Services)

I don't know if that's including out-of-pocket expenses or not, but I'd bet that government spending accounts for the lion's share of that figure. Applying the average national rate of 70% for government spending on healthcare, that's $3.1 billion.

How long would it take for smoking-related illness to drop to proportionately offset the reduction in government revenues from lost tobacco taxes? Probably too long for any government administration to care, at least from a monetary standpoint.

Quit-or-die, in comparison, provides Big Pharma the opportunity to manufacture "quick fixes" that more than pay for the lobby dollars spent in getting them approved.

So the real question is how do we convince the government that its citizens' lives are more important than the bottom line?
 

Stucco Jedi

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Prices on cigarettes keep going up because ,ore and more people quit smoking. So in turn the governments needs to make up the short fall in tax revenue, tax on smokes go up.

Just my 2 cents worth

Not to mention they want you to quit smoking or they say.........but do they really?

Happy vaping
 
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Kaivor

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Jan 21, 2012
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I am happy with the current situation. I really don’t want any form of government control in regards to vaping. It has nothing to do with health and safety. There are million more things we can buy at the grocery store that are more harmful to the human body than vaping. Regulation is the last thing we need! We would have to wait months if not years for every cartomizer, clearomizer, atomizer, pv, etc, to be tested and approved before it hits the market. Then when it does, all of a sudden vaping ends up being a $12.50 a day habit.
 

Smile n' shine

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If ever there was a letter to send to HC, this would be it. I might also mention the sale of alcohol.

Could also throw in that gmo foods were on the shelves without long term evaluations. I have a lot to say about this whole controversy, but at the end of the day, what is the point? :closedeyes:

I have what I want, I am smoke free and I don't have the 'you know who' emptying my pockets. Possibly, all the studies aren't needed? All one has to do is create a multi-billion dollar empire and report it to "you know who".
They like pie, right? ;)

Until then, I want to VIP (vape in peace) :)
 

Oriana871

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I'm also very happy with the current situation, and would only make a big deal if HC made it impossible to get my vaping stuff. Then there's always smuggling... I hesitate to discuss that openly as I'm sure the idea would be very frowned on by the ECF law enforcement agency :), it's a highly illegal sneaky desperate alternative but you know, personally I would participate if that's what it came down to.

So ECF I'm not advocating the above, just thinking out loud.
 

Rttch

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Anyone who visits another site (there is for sure one other member here who does...) may know what KCCO means. I would just replace it with KCVO which translates to, "Keep Calm and Vape On". I'm mostly happy with the current situation, but I would love to have shops in town that I can physically go to and buy my stuff and try samplers. Postal fees are killing me (more than waiting for vape mail).
 

kingcobra

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Well I've been preaching the vape in peace philosophy all along and I"m glad to see that more people support this. We are not dealing with interests here that coincide with our own, or that of the Canadian people. Asking HC to "help" here is like inviting the Mafia into your neighborhood.

Someone mentioned GMO, thanks for bringing that up, that's another big black mark against them. This list is a long one though and a lot of it involves their support for the big health care machine that is designed to promote and prey on illness. In any case, they don't protect us.

Ordering products which they don't approve of isn't smuggling by the way. It's not even illegal. They have the right to seize whatever imports they want, but that just means that we are inconvenienced from time to time. No big deal here really.

There is a lot of corruption out there and the big problem isn't the stuff that goes on in the government, at least our government anyway, it's how much the mainstream media is a tool for big business. For instance, there was a news anchor at a Florida station who was going to run an expose on the dairy industry, and in particular, how hormones given to these cows were harmful. Not only did the story not air, they fired him and his cohorts, they took steps to make sure that he wouldn't work again in the business. This wouldn't have been hard to do considered how he dared irritate the station's advertisers, which isn't something that is tolerated.

There is a glimmer of hope here and that's with the internet, where so called alternative media sources have sprung up, who are at the very least less influenced by big business. So now we can at least see what the media behaves like when they are not someone's puppet.

Most people get their news and other information from the puppet show though so the challenge here is a great one. Fortunately, as many of us have said, what the puppets have to say about us has no real bearing on anything, and we are in the very fortunate position of being able to vape away outside the reach of the Health Gestapo or any other evil figures out there.
 

X P3 Flight Engineer

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HC has not come out against Vaping. They prohibit (or what ever it is they do) e-cigs containing nicotine. So it's not actually Vaping that's the problem.

They also state that they do not know the effects of inhaling nicotine long term (what the he!! have they been doing all these years?!). If you look at some of their legislation you will find that they didn't even have information on smoking. They relied on FDA studies and regulations. Perhaps we should assist our friends to the south since the FDA is likely to have more impact on our lives than anything that happens in Canada!
 

The Doctor

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See, heres the thing with government laws and regulations: they don't apply to you.

Oh sure, the government says they do, and I'm sure they could make things bloody inconvenient for you if they ever caught on that you weren't abiding by words on a piece of paper that you've never seen, signed by a bunch of people you've never met and likely didn't vote for. But they most likely never will, because like all governments, they're to mired in their own bureaucracy to even notice.

So what if they do? What happens when the first Canadian gets arrested or fined for using, owning or selling an electronic cigarette?

Hopefully that person isn't some spineless ...... who just rolls over and takes it with a smile... The vaping industry and subculture has enough momentum, viability, information and support to effectually put big tobacco in a corner like a naughty puppy who has just violated the family cat.

As it stands, health Canada is playing the part of a concerned citizen, not openly saying "u can't do that lol", but saying that they will make things bloody inconvenient for those of us who choose to do so.... We fight this by making it bloody inconvenient for them for ignoring us or trying to mandate the method in which we partake of a substance that is not only legal in its most hazardous form, but that our government makes millions upon blood stained millions from each and every year. Vape freely when and wherever you please (with all appropriate social conventions of course). Convert as many people as you can. Support the local industry as best you can.

Don't hide it. Blow it right in their proverbial faces until they have no choice but to all for a piece of the pie, because its too damn tasty to resist.

Right now we are all pioneers... I know it's frowned on, but here's an analogy a wise friend of mine made, to paraphrase: "is like being alive in the early 60's and bringing ... over the border.. It's not legal, but it's not illegal, it's shifting the consciousness of society in ways too subtle for governments to react to. We're the next generation of Canadian rum runners."

Granted, vaping is nothing like ...... But it is still something that is turning people on to a way of life that simply did not exist before.

The constituents of this sub forum alone have enough combined resources to challenge any bureaucratic legislature in a court of law, and inevitably one of us will. I'm not saying it will be me, but I will say that if they decided to enforce their draconian, fascist regulations on me, it would not be a quiet affair.

Also, espresso before internets... Good idea or great idea?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Xparent Red Tapatalk 2
 

MisterMike

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Hm.

All of this talk of legal grey areas makes me wonder...

First, a little back-story to set the mood. Don't worry; it's relevant.

Back when I decided to first shift careers (without a clutch) and give accounting a go, my tax professor told me a very important thing. If a client ever calls you up with a letter from the CRA (or whatever they're calling themselves this week) stating that he/she has to pony up this amount of money because of this tax reason and this tax reason, or face a penalty, be sure to go over it with a fine-toothed comb and do your research on what they're saying.

Apparently, a lot of the time, they'll be pulling an Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop routine, making something authoritative up and banking on the fact that most people are ignorant about the finer points of taxation and will just quietly accede just to make the scary government people go away. If you call them on it, they'll drop it, because they know darn well they don't have a leg to stand on.

In my short foray into what those in the business call "doing peoples' taxes" I advised two people in such a situation to respond to the CRA basically telling them, "Yeah, no. That's not how it works." and guess what? The CRA took their ball and went to play elsewhere.

I wonder if any of HC's strongly-worded letters to our Canadian suppliers have fallen under that tactic? I guess we'd have to try and get our hands on one. Might help us to get them to just leave well-enough alone in the future.
 

ChellyNelly

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So true, Mike. My Godfather owned a construction business for many, many years and for a lot of those years the CRA was all over him. They sent him frequent notices like the ones you described, but being the intelligent and witty man that he is, he told them to go suck an egg. They made his life hell for about a decade by auditing him and his business every year (not to mention hanging out at his office and threatening his employees), but he just made sure all his ducks were in a row and they couldn't do anything about it. Really quite funny. :D

I think that if our Canadian vendors didn't roll over and die when they got a letter from HC we'd be in a better place than we're in at the moment. Granted, the place we're in isn't all that bad and I actually kind of like it ;)
 

SloHand

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Not sure what this discussion is focused on?

1) Is it the fear of taxation on products associated with vaping?
2) Government agencies ‘meddling’ in our lives?
3) The democratic process (therefore government) is flawed/corrupt/inept?
4) Media (mainstream) manipulates the public because they are manipulated?
5) That there is no detailed long term medical studies to prove or disprove the efficacy of vaping over smoking?

All of the points above are true but does that mean that we go underground? I would say not and will also say, the more we spread the word about the amazing benefits of vaping over smoking, that it will become increasingly difficult to hide from the regulatory agencies and those that would try and bury us. It’s a fact of our societal make-up, we must endure and stand out through this period of ignorance.

Government, media, medicine … they all have issues but with time and perseverance public opinion changes. Women’s right to vote, bloodletting/leeches as a means to cure infection, abolition of slavery ….. it takes time to get any significant alteration in behavior patterns, cultural values and norms but when it’s right it stands up to the test and we (the royal we) come out on top.

I for one believe that going underground debases the importance of spreading vaping to every smoker out there.

I prefer the activists’ path rather than the path to do nothing.

“Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny. - Emialliano Zapata”

I can’t believe that I do this to myself …. Let the words fly :unsure:
 

MisterMike

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Not sure what this discussion is focused on?

1) Is it the fear of taxation on products associated with vaping?
2) Government agencies ‘meddling’ in our lives?
3) The democratic process (therefore government) is flawed/corrupt/inept?
4) Media (mainstream) manipulates the public because they are manipulated?
5) That there is no detailed long term medical studies to prove or disprove the efficacy of vaping over smoking?

All of the points above are true but does that mean that we go underground? I would say not and will also say, the more we spread the word about the amazing benefits of vaping over smoking, that it will become increasingly difficult to hide from the regulatory agencies and those that would try and bury us. It’s a fact of our societal make-up, we must endure and stand out through this period of ignorance.

Government, media, medicine … they all have issues but with time and perseverance public opinion changes. Women’s right to vote, bloodletting/leeches as a means to cure infection, abolition of slavery ….. it takes time to get any significant alteration in behavior patterns, cultural values and norms but when it’s right it stands up to the test and we (the royal we) come out on top.

I for one believe that going underground debases the importance of spreading vaping to every smoker out there.

I prefer the activists’ path rather than the path to do nothing.

“Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny. - Emialliano Zapata”

I can’t believe that I do this to myself …. Let the words fly :unsure:

I can't speak for others, but my worries are mainly based in the idea that if we do end up making this so big that it can't be ignored, is that it will garner too much attention.

If the legislative machine decides that there's nothing they can do to stop vaping outright, then they're going to want to regulate it, and that means decisions being made for us about what we can and cannot purchase by people who have only a very marginal understanding of what's involved. I am seeing the first signs of this in the types of e-cig rigs commercially available in some pharmacies and corner stores. Overpriced, neutered crap that hurts us more than it helps. $10 for a disposable no-nic that doesn't even last two days. $75 for an automatic 808 kit that would normally cost $40 elsewhere, and $15 for a five-pack of replacement pre-filled cartos. All of it emblazoned with the claims that 1ml of liquid is equivalent to 2.5 packs of smokes, and other such nonsense.

I'm not saying go underground with it, but rather that we shoot for a live-and-let-live approach. (And while I'm dreaming, I want a unicorn/penguin hybrid for a pet as well.) Maybe some very basic regulations stating that you must be over 18 to purchase nicotine, and other matters of common sense like that.

Otherwise, I just want to be left alone to buy and use what I want, without the threat of fines, ridiculous sin taxes and uninformed bureaucrats telling me what to do.

Realistically, this sort of outcome is next to impossible, unless we set very expensive precedents in the courts.

Activism is all well and good, but it has the danger of drawing the wrong kind of attention.
 
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