To our esteemed government protectors

Finally, with the assistance of e-cigarettes, smokers can reduce the harm to their health as they get control over an addiction they didn’t understand or ask for when they started smoking cigarettes. No harm from second-hand smoke, no cancer risk, no combustibles, no smell. These products are 100% legal in Canada, sold as a consumer product to consenting adults 19+. Quit misinforming people with your public disapproval.

When Health Canada or the BC health minister or any other cabinet-shuffled flunky talks about the dangers of e-cigarettes and cites the reason being that nicotine can be deadly when ingested (like lozenges or gum?) or absorbed by the skin (like nicotine patches?) they’re talking about the dangers of a product that you, the government, ALREADY ENDORSES AND TAXES. If nicotine is so goddamned dangerous and deadly, why don’t you ban the sale of nicotine products altogether? You’d have to make cigarettes, and nicotine, illegal. Nicotine isn’t dangerous enough to do that and you know it.

The danger of cigarettes is NOT in the nicotine – that’s just the addictive aspect, on par with caffeine. It’s the almost 4000 noxious ingredients that are carcinogenic when combusted. Nicotine does not cause cancer. If the government was so concerned, cigarettes and Nicorette would be illegal, now, wouldn’t they? Oh, but the flavours, e-cigarettes must be targeting children, because apparently nobody over the age of 19 likes vanilla ice cream or green apple (Adult Chocolate Milk and marshmallow vodka aside, and orange and mint nicotine gum notwithstanding). This reasoning is akin to banning root beer because it may lead children to alcohol addiction.

And then the stern warning that kids will inevitably switch to real tobacco, because people – especially young ones – always prefer the taste of burnt garbage over honey or chocolate, is nothing but an archaic scare tactic designed to tap into our need to try to protect minors from harm. Minors can’t buy e-cigarettes, and grown-ups enjoy different flavours. That’s why the nicotine gum comes in different flavours.

E-cigarettes deliver nicotine, propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, flavour and water, and that’s pretty much it. E-cigarettes are cheaper than antidepressant smoking medications, cheaper than nicotine inhalers, patches, or gum, cheaper than tobacco cigarettes, and will save millions in health care – and millions in tobacco sales and taxes has been, and will be, lost. If anyone wants to know why there’s such a huge push from HC against e-cigarettes, there you go, follow the money, again. You, Big Government, make significantly more money from the sale of cigarettes than tobacco companies do.

HC issued the statement of “non-approval” of e-cigarettes back in 2009. They’ve had four years to research and test these products. Seems all they’ve done with their research teams in that time has been to look into profit margins to see the massive losses to Big Tobacco and Big Government as a result of smokers switching to e-cigarettes.

Canadians are being manipulated by the disinformation about this product. The biggest side effect is not nicotine poisoning or addiction (most people using e-cigarettes are already addicted to nicotine, they just don’t want to smoke cigarettes anymore). It’s quitting tobacco, at a rate estimated to be 50% of cigarette smokers switching over in the next ten years. That’s a lot of tax revenue lost. In cigarette taxes alone last year you lost somewhere around 238 million dollars. You know this, and you want that money. So you’re leaning on HC to misinform the public. This is clear if people think logically about nicotine already being perfectly legal to purchase and use, in the same delivery method and legal dosage as the e-cigarette (Nicorette inhalers).

E-cigarettes are a safer and smarter way to smoke, and smokers aren’t all stupid, irresponsible people. Some of them got hooked when they were young and have a hard time quitting as adults. If they want to use this method of nicotine delivery, and nicotine is already legal, already condoned and already recommended for this purpose and by this method, stop telling people how dangerous nicotine is when you already approve its sale. Or, start putting warnings about addiction on all alcohol, and coffee cups and chocolate bars and energy drinks as well.

E-cigarettes are changing the way people smoke and encouraging smokers to quit tobacco, and everybody should be satisfied by this alternative. Do some research. Stop misinforming people that they’re banned, or illegal. This demonizes people who are already considered demonic because they smoke. They want to quit, they want to make a better choice for themselves, their loved ones, and for those who complain about being poisoned in the street by their cigarette pollution. HC should be behind this if they really do care about the health of Canadians. And everyone else should be behind this, especially if they’re against cigarettes. —an esteemed citizen

This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2013.