During the federal election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s past roles at Brookfield Asset Management and with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (FGANZ) came under some scrutiny. His membership on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies did not. But it should have. Bloomberg Philanthropies is the world’s preeminent bankroller of public-health puritans, those who wage a relentless, well-funded war against harm reduction from tobacco. Since 2005, they’ve poured $1.58 billion, nearly six per cent of their total spend, into discouraging less harmful forms of nicotine consumption, thus ignoring reason and pragmatism.
As of 2022, 10.2 per cent of Canadians still smoke. The most effective way to reduce that number is not sanctimonious sermons by groups Bloomberg funds, but in the hard-won lessons of nations like Sweden and Japan, where harm reduction has triumphed over dogma.
Sweden’s smoking rate is now down to five per cent. How did the Swedes achieve this? By embracing harm reduction, in the form of snus and nicotine pouches. Snus is tobacco in a pouch, put under the lip, while nicotine pouches are similar but contain no tobacco and just nicotine. In comparison to cigarettes, snus and nicotine pouches are, respectively, 95 and 99 per cent less harmful.
Pouches (both snus and nicotine) have been a Swedish staple for decades. In the late 1970s, when 40 per cent of Swedish men were still smoking, pouches began a quiet revolution. Today, a third of male ex-smokers credit these low-risk alternatives with their liberation from cigarettes, and studies confirm that those who start with pouches are far less likely to take up smoking. The result? Cigarettes have been displaced, smoking-related illnesses have plummeted and Sweden’s public health is the envy of the world.
Contrast this with Canada’s response: the former Liberal government, in a fit of pearl clutching, banned nicotine pouches from convenience stores, requiring them to be sold in pharmacies, and outlawed all flavours except mint. These policies run counter to the best scientific evidence available and should be reversed as soon as possible.
Japan has charted a different but equally instructive course. Historically a nation of ardent smokers, it saw cigarette sales and smoking rates collapse after legalizing “heat-not-burn products” — devices that, by avoiding the noxious combustion of tobacco, reduce harm by upwards of 90 per cent, as even the U.S Food and Drug Administration has conceded. According to Japan’s National Health Survey, 19.6 per cent of the population smoked in 2014 (the year before heat-not-burn products launched). In 2023, only 10.8 per cent did.
Peer-reviewed research found that the Japanese cigarette market halved in just over a decade from 2011-2023 with almost all of that decline happening from 2016 onward as consumers shifted to heat-not-burn. Even the American Cancer Society, no friend to nicotine in any form, grudgingly admits that heat-not-burn products are driving this decline. And the public health dividends are undeniable: a health economics study found that if half of Japan’s smokers switched to these devices, the savings would be the equivalent of more than C$4.3 billion.
Canada’s policy confusion when it comes to harm reduction and lowering smoking rates is all but total. Our tax regime, with its sanctimonious “sin tax,” treats heat-not-burn products as if they were as lethal as cigarettes. The excise stamp (tax) demands a minimum of 50 grams, so a 5.33-gram pack of heat-not-burn units is taxed as if it contained 50 grams, nine times more than if it were just taxed per gram, and three times more than a pack of 20 cigarettes.
How is it good for public health if a smoker, seeking a less harmful path, is slapped with a tax penalty that makes the switch economically silly? This is not good policy; it is punishment, a perverse disincentive to those who would escape the clutches of cigarettes.
The sin tax on cigarettes exists to deter use and raise revenue for governments. But if heat-not-burn products reduce harm and serve as a bridge away from smoking, taxing them as if they were cigarettes is perverse. Worse, it amounts to cynical extortion, a betrayal of those who seek to better their health. Canada should abandon this folly, embrace harm reduction, and look to Sweden and Japan — not Bloomberg’s nicotine prohibitionism — for guidance.
To stick with current policy is to consign countless Canadians to preventable disease, all in the name of a moralizing dogma that has no place in a rational society. Prime Minister Carney may have resigned from the board at Bloomberg Philanthropies. He should also dissociate himself from its ideology.
Originally published here
