Richard Crosby 5 April 2024

 

Canadian Health Minister Mark Holland delivered what I’m sure he felt was a powerful speech the other day… However, I’m not entirely sure his ‘incredible concern’ is about the right things. He has the easy target of Big Tobacco in his sights, and very specifically nicotine pouches.

Tough talk indeed from a representative of the government that invoked the Wartime Emergencies Act to deal with protestors. Proportionality seems like such an alien concept to these jokers that one has to wonder what Holland and his ilk would do if they saw something truly evil? Oh, wait. We do know. They’d invite him to parliament and praise him as a war hero.

Sadly, Holland is not the only clown squeezing into a little car in this circus. Doug Roth, the CEO of the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada, was also out there bending and twisting the truth as if it were soft putty.

He said, “We applaud his strongly worded announcement and look forward to quick action to protect kids from these dangerous products.” He also said that Holland’s steps “are exactly what we need to protect our youth from the scourge of nicotine addiction.”

Yes, you did read that correctly. That’s:

  • Dangerous: able or likely to cause harm or injury.
  • Scourge: a person or thing that causes great trouble or suffering.

Roth and Holland’s claims are so exaggerated and excessive, they make the extravagant festivities of The Great Gatsby seem pretty tame.

Surely, they would back up their wild statements with some good old fashioned scientific research?

Nah, that’s not how this works.

In the world of Tobacco Control, any old madness will do if it’s about taking it to Big Tobacco, even when the products under question do not contain tobacco.

The nicotine pouch situation in Canada

As we wrote at the time, there is only one nicotine pouch available for sale in Canada. They are called ZONNIC, and they are restricted to 4 mg pouches, which is far below the industry standard and well under where I personally think we should set the limit (I’m closer to 20mg/g based on research I’ve seen).

To briefly summarise the situation, Health Canada approved these pouches last year as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Their low strength prevented them from falling under the remit of the Food and Drug Act Regulations.

The authorisation for ZONNIC states that it can’t be sold to anyone under 18. However, if a shop sells pouches to people under the legal age, it will not face a penalty. This situation has created a hypothetical moral panic, with all sorts of oddballs slithering out from under the rocks to make laughable claims.

Shortly after ZONNIC was approved, Cynthia Callard, who is the executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said: “The problem with these products is they are introduced without any disclosure or testing, or any sense of what the public health impact is.”

You’re the executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. ZONNIC went through a much-publicised two-year assessment process with Health Canada. Additionally, If you don’t have a sense of the public health impact of nicotine pouches, it’s not because the data isn’t there; it’s because you aren’t doing your job properly.

In what other industry could you be so ignorant about the fundamentals and still collect a massive paycheck? And can I work there, please?

Callard also pulled out the braindead argument, “We didn’t know how dangerous cigarettes were 100 years ago,” labouring under the pretence that science is in the same state that it was before the discovery of penicillin in the late 1920s.

But I’ll leave you with the best one. Holland claims that “Excessive amounts of nicotine can cause overdose or acute poisoning, which can lead to respiratory failure and death.”

How many cases of respiratory failure or death from vaping or nicotine patches have there been in Canada or even across the world? Zero.

The other thing is providing zero data about how many young Canadians are even using pouches. This is a fake moral panic from a fake Health Minister.

Sure, these products are not 100% risk-free, but they are vastly safer than smoking.

Holland should just restrict their sales to adults and let them give up cigarettes in whatever way they want. Then, he can collect the tax money and blow it on for whatever loony policy his party comes up with next.