Prime Minister Mark Carney found a lot of success in the last election by adopting Conservative positions on the consumer carbon tax and the Justin Trudeau government’s planned capital gains tax increase, among others.
He should do the same thing when it comes to the Conservative position on harm reduction, specifically for nicotine pouches.
During the dying days of the Trudeau regime, former health minister Mark Holland banned certain flavours of nicotine pouches and restricted the sale of pouches that are still allowed to be sold to being behind pharmacy counters.
Months later, during this past spring’s federal election, the Conservatives pledged to reverse Holland’s move, noting harm reduction products “should be available where adults shop, just like cigarettes are.”
And just last week, Conservative MP Brad Vis presented a petition to Parliament calling on the government to restore the sale of nicotine pouches to corner stores, where most consumers purchased them prior to Holland’s move to restrict their sale to pharmacies.
“Adults should have the freedom to choose where they access these products, and convenience stores have a proven track record of selling age-restricted items responsibly,” said Vis.
From a harm-reduction standpoint, Holland’s move to limit nicotine pouch flavours and make pouches that are still allowed to be sold hard to access made zero sense. The Conservatives have adopted a commonsense approach to harm reduction when it comes to nicotine pouches, and Carney would be wise to once again adopt sensible Conservative policy as his own.
Nicotine pouches have been found to be 99% less harmful than cigarettes, according to the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment. Why make it easier for smokers to access cigarettes, which they can still do at convenience stores, and harder to access harm reduction products like nicotine pouches, which now require a trip to the pharmacy?
Restricting where pouches can be sold and the types of flavours that are allowed to be sold simply doesn’t make sense. Governments should be focused on harm reduction and making these products more, not less, accessible.
It’s important to remember that it’s combustible tobacco, not nicotine, that is having such a damaging impact on Canadians’ health.
If consumers want to be able to purchase products with nicotine, like pouches, instead of buying cigarettes, it simply doesn’t make sense to make it easier for those consumers to buy cigarettes than it is to get a hold of smoking cessation tools.
Critics of nicotine pouches, like Holland, argue that pouches are a gateway to smoking. But the evidence simply doesn’t bear that out.
The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment found that nicotine pouches have a limited appeal of about 11-12% to people who have never consumed tobacco products before.
On the other hand, among smokers or those who chew tobacco, interest in nicotine pouches increases to 75%.
This shouldn’t be a shocker. Smokers and tobacco chewers often spend decades trying to quit. If pouches represent a clear off-ramp that is less risky to one’s health than smoking or chewing tobacco, it makes sense that smokers and chewers would be highly interested in pouches.
Then there’s the issue of the black market. We’ve seen that contraband tobacco is a huge issue in Canada. Why adopt policies that encourage the emergence of a contraband market for smoking cessation tools as well?
The black market allows for no government regulation, whereas bringing tools like nicotine pouches into the mainstream, governments can enact sensible regulations by treating them as smoking cessation tools.
Carney has had a lot of success in adopting Conservative policy positions in the past. He wants Canadians to believe that he’s a middle-ground, evidence-based politician who is willing to break with policy legacies of the Trudeau era when it makes sense to do so. If all of this is still true, Carney should take a very hard look at Holland’s changes to nicotine pouch rules and move to make these tools easier, not harder, to access.
Originally published here