Five years after the federal government announced it would restrict vaping flavours nationwide, Canada’s health minister won’t say when or even if it will still happen — despite widespread expert advice that a ban could help curb the country’s staggering youth vaping rate.
“I’m committed to keep Canadians informed on next steps,” Health Minister Marjorie Michel said in an interview with CBC News. “It’s very important to me to protect youth.”
Public records show the nicotine and vaping industries have been regularly lobbying Health Canada, along with Liberal ministers and MPs.
Reports describe meetings to “seek assurances the federal government will not implement a flavour ban.”
Asked repeatedly if Ottawa still plans to restrict flavours, Michel said, “I am willing to move in that direction.” Michel would not provide a timeline for a decision, only saying, “As soon as possible. I have hope.”
Canada’s chief public health officers, along with health organizations like the Canadian Cancer Society and Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada have called on Ottawa to bring in national flavour restrictions for years.
The Liberals have repeatedly promised to do so, including as recently as last spring’s election.
Health minister ‘willing to move’ in the direction of restricting vaping flavours
In 2021, Health Canada announced it planned to limit the sale of vaping flavours nationwide to only mint, menthol and tobacco, citing the body of evidence that fruity and sweet flavours appeal to youth.
Canada has one of the highest youth vaping rates in the world, with approximately nearly one in three Canadians under the age of 25 vaping within the last 30 days. Ten per cent of high school students now vape daily.
Vaping is less harmful than cigarettes and can be effectively used by some adult smokers to quit, despite Health Canada never approving vaping for that purpose. In 2024, one in five Canadians that quit smoking said they did it with vaping.
The majority of Canadians who vape, however, are under the age of 25, and never smoked. Instead, vaping is often a young person’s first introduction to nicotine — and makes them more likely to become a cigarette smoker.
Ottawa has had regulations ready to go for two years. But the federal government hasn’t brought them in, citing concerns the ban could trigger an illicit market — a common argument also made by nicotine lobbyists.
Now, Health Minister Michel appeared to argue provinces and territories needed to be on board first.
“I am working really closely with my provincial and territorial counterparts to see what we can do together,” Michel said. “I need to make sure that everybody agrees.”
Michel could not say who disagrees with a ban, beyond the vaping industry, which has adamantly fought it. Those vaping companies — many which have ties to Big Tobacco — warn restrictions could lead former smokers back to cigarettes.
But that appears to not be what new evidence shows.
While Ottawa has failed to bring in its promised ban, other jurisdictions in Canada have —including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P.E.I. and Quebec.
New research from the Youth Tobacco and Vaping Survey, done through the University of Waterloo School of Public Health Sciences, suggests flavours bans may be associated with a reduction in youth vaping rates.
The survey looked at 42,500 Canadians aged 16 to 19, and found those who lived in provinces that brought in flavour bans reported vaping less.
The data suggested no significant change in the youth smoking rate, a concern the vaping industry had warned would happen if flavours were taken away.
David Hammond, the lead researcher of the survey, said the data suggests removing flavours is a simple way to curb youth appeal without preventing adult smokers from accessing vapes to quit cigarettes.
“Vaping is less harmful. It’s cheaper. It doesn’t smell. The difference is that flavours matter more to kids than they matter to an adult smoker who might be trying e-cigarettes to quit. And that’s what the data shows,” Hammond said.
“Take away the candy flavours and you can still leave lots of products out there for adult smokers. So if it sounds like a fairly basic principle, it’s because it is.”
Other research of 3,000 Canadian teens and young adults from Michael Chaiton with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, still under review, is also aligning with what Hammond’s survey found.
“The flavour regulations were associated with reduction in use of vaping products, but no spillover effects into smoking,” Chaiton said.
The actual flavours make very little difference in how well vaping works to help someone quit smoking, Chaiton said, but were the reasons why many young people tried vaping in the first place.
Both researchers said the patchwork of provincial bans is proving hard to enforce — especially when someone can order a flavoured vaping product online from a province without restrictions.
“A national ban would be much more effective,” Chaiton said.
While Ottawa has failed to act on vaping flavours, there is a precedent: Just a year after nicotine pouches hit the Canadian market, former health minister Mark Holland used his powers to ban sweet flavours.
The nicotine industry has an incentive to keep flavours around, Hammond said, because vaping and nicotine pouches are helping grow their market for the first time in decades.
Those companies argue restricting access to vapes will fuel an illicit market — making it harder to protect youth.
“Flavour bans risk creating new challenges for governments, including the proliferation of unregulated products, reduced consumer safety, loss of tax revenue and increased pressure on enforcement agencies,” the Canadian Vaping Association wrote in a statement to CBC News.
The industry argues some adults smokers switch to less-harmful vaping because they like the taste.
But Jacob Woloshin, a former smoker who also recently quit vaping, said those flavours only made it harder for him to quit his vape.
“It’s easy to stay addicted to vaping with the flavours. They are fun and they are tasty.… It’s like all the sugar in pop. It’s there to make it sweet, good and get you to have another. It’s part of the addiction process,” Wolochin said.
The 43-year-old, who bartended for years in Ottawa, said he saw first-hand the new wave of addiction that came from young people picking up vaping who hadn’t smoked.
“There’s banana, mango, pineapple and ice. You look at the flavours and it’s like a whole cocktail,” he said. “They should definitely have at least heavy restrictions if not full on ban.”
Dr. Hassan Mir, a cardiologist and medical director of smoking cessation at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, said some of his patients are vaping the nicotine equivalent of 100 cigarettes a day, without realizing.
“The reality is that there’s this massive tsunami of nicotine addiction that’s coming,” Dr. Mir said.
Mir, who has now opened a clinic just to help vapers quit, said many of the people he sees are young and never smoked, but started vaping because it was cool, tasty and smelled good.
“What ends up happening is that that rapidly tumbles down into a significant addiction,” Mir said.
Instead of seeing adult smokers use vaping to quit, Mir says he witnesses the opposite: Young people start vaping and then move to cigarettes.
“It’s actually people that were like, ‘Oh, I started vaping when I was 15. It was too harsh on my lungs. So I ended up switching to cigarettes.'” Mir said. “And this is not a one-off.
“I don’t think people understand just how big of a problem this is.”
