Both the provincial and federal governments have roles to play in regulating controversial electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes.
Arguably, it's more critical for the federal government than the provincial government to assume its responsibilities in regulating e-cigarette use, although it's the province that appears to be taking the bull by the horns on the regulation front.
On Jan. 16, Nova Scotia Health Minister Leo Glavine announced that the provincial government will introduce legislation this spring to ban e-cigarette use in public places.
"For our province, we've made such great gains for not having smoking in public places and the e-cigarettes will be looked at through the Smoke-free Places Act," Glavine told the media, adding that e-cigarettes contain nicotine and can lead young people to smoke traditional cigarettes.
The province also plans to make it illegal to sell e-cigarettes to minors. And retailers will only be able to sell e-cigarettes from behind the counter.
It makes sense to prevent minors from using e-cigarettes and to sell them from behind the counter, because they're not innocuous for the user and they're ostensibly a smoking cessation aid.
The supposed wisdom in banning e-cigarette use (inhaling its vapours or "vaping") in public places, however, isn't so cut and dry.
"Advocates fear that e-cigarettes will serve as a gateway to deadly cigarettes — or sustain smokers in public settings where lighting up is banned," wrote Amy L. Fairchild and James Colgrove, both professors at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, in a recent New York Times piece. "But there is a price to such rigidity. Emotion should not rule out harm reduction, even if eradication of smoking is the ultimate goal. Banning vaping in public won't help."
The provincial government seems to be dismissing such reasoned arguments.
On the other hand, the federal government — via Health Canada — has banned the sale of e-cigarettes and is ordering retailers to stop selling them. That's counterproductive. They may turn out to be a fad, but people will get their hands on them, and early research indicates that e-cigarettes have at least some benefit as a smoking cessation aid.
"We have never seen any product, nicotine-replacement therapy product, that has generated so much interest on behalf of the smokers. This is so amazing," Francois Damphousse, a researcher with the Non-smokers Rights Association, told the National Post recently. "What you should do is permit it on the market and inform the public — 'If you have to make a choice because you're addicted, go for the safer product.'"
In other words, the federal government should legalize and regulate e-cigarettes, as it has done with other smoking cessation aids. A welcome side-effect might be that they'll be considered less sexy when legalized and regulated.