Lindsey Stroud is a Senior Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA). Martin Cullip is TPA’s International Fellow. The Prince Edward Island government’s proposal to ban the sale of tobacco products to individuals born after a certain year is a bold but potentially misguided attempt to curtail tobacco use. This measure overlooks significant declines in youth tobacco use and may inadvertently support efforts by nongovernmental organizations to ban less harmful tobacco harm reduction (THR) products. Instead of implementing sweeping bans, policymakers should focus on promoting THR products among current adult smokers and educating youth about the harms of tobacco.The proposed tobacco-free generation plan will not restrict access to vapor products. However, the "Live Well PEI [Prince Edward Island]" initiative notes that youth vaping remains popular in the province, expressing concerns over nicotine dependency from vaping. The numbers tell a different story. Only two percent of Prince Edward Island youth in Grades 7-12 reported using combustible cigarettes in the past month during 2021-22, a 62.3% decline from 2018-19. This record low suggests that a tobacco-free generation ban might be unnecessary.Vaping among Prince Edward Island youth has slightly decreased recently. From 2018-19 to 2021-22, there was only a 0.4% drop in the percentage of youth reporting current e-cigarette use. Flavours were the least-cited reason for vaping; only 4.6% of youth vapers reported using e-cigarettes because of flavors, compared to 16.8% who used them to relax or relieve stress.While the tobacco-free generation proposal aims to mitigate the long-term harms of smoking, it misses key issues. The proposal fails to address significant health risks among adults who smoke and overlooks the potential of newer THR products to reduce smoking rates among both adults and youth. Smoking rates among adults in Prince Edward Island have increased, with 13.1% of residents aged 15 or older currently smoking in 2022—a 52.1% increase from 2021. At the same time, the percentage of Prince Edward Island residents who were vaping decreased by 4.6% between 2021 and 2022.This is unfortunate as among all Canadian adults, more than one-fourth (26.9%) reported formerly smoking. Moreover, the most common reason Canadians aged 15 or older were vaping in 2022 was “to reduce stress” as reported by 21.7 percent, followed by 18.8% who vaped for smoking cessation. Further, an additional 11% reported currently vaping to “avoid returning to smoking.”With adult smoking prevalence rising, and youth smoking declining consistently to a dwindling cohort, the main problem for Prince Edward Island’s health authorities is the much larger population of adults who have a long history of smoking.Despite misinformation and disinformation campaigns, vaping and other THR products offer a way for adults who are unable or unwilling to quit smoking to transition to significantly less harmful options. According to the Prince Edward Island government website, harm reduction is defined as “any evidence-informed intervention that helps reduce the risk of harms associated with a behavior without requiring abstinence from that behavior.” The proposal to ban tobacco for a certain population runs counter to the Island’s harm reduction strategy while addressing the ongoing opioid crisis. It is already illegal for underage people to buy cigarettes, yet there are still many who smoke. Adolescents are already able to circumvent laws to prevent underage use and will continue to do so as a large and lucrative black market inevitably replaces legal sales. It is important to understand that this measure does not ban any child from buying cigarettes because that is already illegal. Instead, it denies the choice to buy cigarettes once a person becomes an adult. Prince Edward Island would achieve better results for public health by expanding education programs so that citizens fully understand the vast difference in relative risk between combustible tobacco and safer nicotine alternatives. With this approach, nicotine initiation will mostly be by way of products which do not present the lethal risk of traditional cigarettes and will result in combustible tobacco use becoming old-fashioned and rare. In this way, benefits to public health will eclipse the hypothetical benefits of an untested and hopeful tobacco-free generation policy.Lindsey Stroud is a Senior Fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA). Martin Cullip is TPA’s International Fellow.
