Canada: Anti-smoking Activists Want Ban on Flavoured Tobacco

Source from:  CJAD 800 AM (ca)  10/14/2013

Too many young Canadians, and especially Quebecers, are using flavoured tobacco products.

This is according to the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact of the University of Waterloo's latest biannual study.

The study shows that over 33,000 high school students in Quebec used the flavoured products in the past 30 days. That accounts for 59 percent of all Quebec students who have tried tobacco in that time. That's above the national average of 52 percent and Ontario's 46 percent.

According to the Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control and the Canadian Cancer Society, flavoured tobacco products should be banned.

The Coalition's Flory Doucas says federal legislation prohibiting the sale of tobacco to minors isn't effective, and that tobacco producers are finding loopholes in the law to target teens.

"If we want to see any gains, if we want the smoking rates drop and see tobacco use drops, we'll certainly have to tackle the tobacco products themselves," she says. "And a ban on flavoured additives just makes sense. It's incoherent to be candy-coating cancer."

She adds that smoking rates in Quebec have remained stagnant over the past six years, at around 24 percent. She says that for every smoker who quits or dies, a youth starts smoking. Enditem