Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the U.S. NGO ecosystem with his executive order which pauses federal funding, pending review, for organizations that are deemed to be “undermining national security.” What falls in this category is opaque, but generally speaking, the premise is that funding is paused until the Trump administration can review how money is being spent, specifically to ensure they aren’t using taxpayer money to fund organizations that undermine Trump’s policies. Regardless of what you might think of President Trump, the logic of this does make sense.

Ironically enough the same issue is also making headlines in Europe right now as well, where the European Commission has conceded that public funds have been used to fund NGOs who turn around and lobby MEPs for policy change.

Why does this matter for Canada? Well, it matters because we have this very same problem here in Canada, especially when it comes to public health lobbying.

In October, the self-appointed guardians of public health, Physicians For A Smoke-Free Canada, marched on Parliament Hill, demanding the resignation of Ya’ara Saks, minister of addictions, for her alleged failure to crack down on the vaping industry. They called for an end to all flavoured vapes, insisting that only tobacco flavour should be permitted, despite the fact that smokers trying to quit overwhelmingly rely on flavours to ditch cigarettes. Making vapes taste like the product people are trying to quit is a ludicrous proposition if there ever was one. Why should a product without tobacco mimic its noxious flavor, especially when it’s meant to help smokers quit, and 95 percent less harmful than smoking?

From the perspective of harm reduction, their crusade is a regressive misstep. The very essence of vaping is to provide an alternative to smoking, not to replicate its sensory experience. Yet, these activists, armed with myths about vaping’s efficacy in smoking cessation, push for policies that would make quitting harder, not easier.

The irony here is as thick as the smoke they seek to banish. Organizations like Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, which one might think would celebrate any smoke-free alternative, are curiously funded by the government, in an almost identical way as in Europe. In a dance of circular lobbying, this group, receiving up to 95 percent of its funding from public coffers, lobbies the same government for policy changes. This is not charity; this is an orchestrated echo chamber where taxpayer money funds the very advocacy that seeks to control taxpayer behaviour.

What we see here is not just a waste of public funds but a perversion of democracy. When the government pays to lobby itself, it erodes the independence of civil society, manipulates public discourse, and masks political maneuvering as public health advocacy. In 2022, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, with more than half its revenue spent on just twoemployees’ salaries, exemplifies this corrupt process.

This circular “sock puppeting,” a term coined by Christopher Snowden at the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, isn’t limited to one organization, on one issue. Take the example of nicotine pouches, which don’t contain tobacco, don’t cause cancer, and are shown to not only be a useful tool to quit smoking but are also 99 percent less harmful than cigarettes. The Canadian Cancer Society, which received more than $27,000,000 from taxpayers in 2024, actively lobbied for heavy restrictions on this smoking cessation tool. Yes, the Canadian Cancer Society, while getting millions from taxpayers, turned around and lobbied Ottawa to restrict access to a product that doesn’t cause cancer.

Unfortunately, the same old song rings true on alcohol policy as well, where organizations historically tied to the prohibition movement peddle exaggerated risks about moderate alcohol consumption, again with you, the taxpayer, footing the bill for it.

The real scandal isn’t vape flavours, nicotine pouches, or alcohol-related pseudoscience; it’s the systemic corruption where the government funds its own critics to push policies against the public’s actual interest. This is not about health; it’s about control, disguised in the garb of concern. We should not, as taxpayers, fund our own fun policing, especially when it comes to the personal choices of adults.

This practice of self-lobbying must end. It’s unlikely to be ended by this government, especially with its narrowing shelf life, but it should be ended by the next. If Pierre Poilievre becomes Canada’s prime minister after the next election, he’ll have a fiscal mess to clean up, and circular lobbying should be one of the first cuts made. It’s time to call out these “sock puppets” for what they are—the fun police, funded by our own money, to limit our freedoms under the guise of protecting us.

Originally published here

Last Friday, anti-vaping activists took to Parliament Hill and called for the resignation of Minister of Addiction Ya’ara Saks. They said they’ve been waiting 14 months for the minister to “strengthen controls” on vaping and she has not delivered. Their main grievance is that vaping products are flavoured, and they repeated their call for all vape flavours to be banned.

This would be a huge step backward in harm reduction. According to the anti-vapers, vape products should only be tobacco-flavoured. On its face this is ridiculous. Why make a product that doesn’t contain tobacco taste like tobacco? And from the standpoint of smokers trying to quit, which many vapers are, why would the government want to limit vapers’ access to only one flavour — which tastes like the product they are trying to quit altogether?

Even stranger than these organizations’ logic, however, is the fact that they’re heavily funded by the very government whose minister they would like to see resign.

Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada, for example, is almost entirely funded by Ottawa and provincial governments. Last year, 85 per cent of its funding came directly from government. In 2020 and 2021, 97 per cent did. There is nothing necessarily wrong with organizations getting government funding, but when the money is used to aggressively lobby government for policy change, ethical questions need to be asked. Why is the government, in other words taxpayers, paying people to lobby itself? And why are certain policy viewpoints getting public support and not others?

Circular self-lobbying not only wastes taxpayer money, it also subverts democracy and erodes the concept of charity by killing charities’ independence. And it is fraudulent: it skews the public debate and political processes by masquerading circular self-lobbying as genuine civil society activism. A group of concerned doctors trying to altruistically convince Canadians to stop smoking is in reality an organization that in 2022 paid one full-time and one part-time employee a total of $104,382 in taxpayer money to lobby the government.

Government-funded NGOs and non-profits need government money because their issues don’t have widespread public support. If they did, they’d be able to fund-raise off that support. But in 2023 Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada, for instance, could only raise eight per cent of its total budget from receipted donations (with another seven per cent from “other sources,” leaving 85 per cent from government.)

Vaping isn’t risk-free. But it is much less risky than smoking — Public Health England says 95 per cent less risky. And clinical trials have shown it is a more successful quitting tool than the nicotine replacement therapies that have been on the market for decades. Research from Queen Mary University in London shows that vaping is about twice as effective as gums or patches in quitting smoking.

And flavours are a main reason vaping is a successful tool for quitting. Morethan two-thirds of vapers use vaping flavours other than tobacco-flavoured, and for good reason. They increase the likelihood of quitting smoking entirely. According to researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, vapes that aren’t tobacco-flavoured more than double the likelihood of quitting smoking.

Around 40,000 Canadians die each year from tobacco-related illnesses. Our smoking rate, though it has fallen sharply over the decades, is still about 12 per cent. You’d think an organization pushing for a “smoke-free Canada” would want to encourage more adults to access products that are exactly that, smoke-free.

Government spending money to lobby itself is perverse. The Institute For Economic Affairs in the U.K. calls the organizations that do it “sock puppets.” Should we, as taxpayers and adults, be actively funding individuals and organizations who want to police the choices we make? Absolutely not. This nefarious practice of circular lobbying needs to be ended, if not by this government then by the next.

Originally published here

Few topics in mental health create as much attention and misunderstanding as the rise of vaping. The mainstream media has painted a grim picture of these devices as a looming crisis, particularly for young folks, often referring to vaping products as “gateway devices”. While undoubtedly born of genuine concern, this narrative fails to acknowledge the reality of the role of vaping in tobacco harm reduction. This can unintentionally risk pushing smokers away from what can be a lifesaving alternative. When one directly examines the scientific literature on vaping, a completely different story emerges from the ones most public commentators speak of. 

Several studies conducted by authoritative sources such as Public Health England suggest that e-cigarettes are about 95 per cent less harmful than ordinary cigarettes. The effectiveness of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool is another area where public perception often trails behind scientific evidence. For instance, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that e-cigarettes were twice as effective at aiding smokers to quit compared to traditional nicotine replacement therapies. This finding, backed up by real-world data from countries like the United Kingdom, emphasizes the strong potential of vaping as a formidable weapon in the battle against smoking and smokingrelated diseases. As such, policy approaches that incorrectly treat vaping as equivalent to smoking or, worse, seek to ban it entirely do more harm than good.

Once celebrated as visionary, Bhutan’s attempted comprehensive tobacco ban ultimately led to a sharp growth in smoking rates and fostered a thriving black market, forcing a repeal of the policy. Similarly, South Africa’s temporary ban during the Covid-19 pandemic barely made a dent in smoking, with analyses after the fact showing that 93 per cent of South African smokers continued to practice the habit despite the ban. Moreover, rates returned to their prior values once the policy was repealed, leaving no hint of any lingering benefit. At the same time, the ban significantly increased prices of cigarettes by 240 per cent, a burden that fell disproportionately on lower-income individuals.

The unintended consequences of overly rigid policies are, thus, not mere speculation. Flavour bans, often proposed to supposedly reduce youth appeal, represent another well-intentioned but counterproductive policy. Evidence suggests that curiosity, not flavours, is the primary driver of experimentation. Furthermore, vaping flavours are key players in assisting smokers to move away from cigarettes. Hence, eliminating this option could push former smokers back to more harmful tobacco products. But by far the most pernicious myth surrounding vaping, one that has captured the minds of many policymakers (here in India included), is the “gateway effect,” which fears that young people who take up vaping will eventually end up smoking cigarettes instead.

In reality, multiple studies, like a comprehensive review of fifteen articles, fail to demonstrate any causal link between vaping and subsequent smoking initiation. Indeed, the evidence is in population numbers. Until 2016, India was the second largest tobacco consumer in the world, second only to China. However, since the advent of vaping, youth smoking rates have been at an all-time low, with a substantial 6 per cent decline in smoking rates among teens in India when vaping rates have been going up. Far from a gateway effect, these figures indicate that vapes are used as a safer alternative for cigarettes. As we navigate the intricate landscape of tobacco control in the 21st century, it’s imperative to embrace a comprehensive harm reduction approach, one that recognizes the potential of e-cigarettes as a less harmful alternative to smoking. 

Such an approach calls for nuanced policies that balance youth protection with the needs of adult smokers seeking to quit. The stakes measured in lives saved and improved are simply too high to let misinformation guide our approach to what could be one of the most significant public health innovations of our time.

Originally published here