Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says flavoured vapes are “a gateway for kids in particular” to cigarettes and other tobacco products, and that claim is central justification for the province’s new bill restricting flavoured vape sales to age-restricted stores in urban areas. While wanting to curb youth access to nicotine is a noble goal, a ban is the wrong lesson to draw from the evidence, and Manitoba is about to make life harder for adult smokers trying to quit while doing little to protect kids.
The common view that vaping is a gateway for kids to end up smoking is false, and we know it is false from federal health data that tracks youth access to both cigarettes and vaping products. Simply put, if vaping led to smoking, Canada, and Manitoba, would have seen youth smoking rates skyrocket alongside the vaping boom that peaked in 2019. The reality however is that this projection never happened.