Using e-cigarettes in public
Fifty-year-old Ghulam Hasnain started smoking when he was a young accountant in India. He described himself as a “heavy smoker,” noting he almost always finished a pack a day and would smoke more than 30 cigarettes a day on a “busy” day.
For Hasnain, quitting smoking was not a health-based decision. He did it because it was convenient.
In May, 1988, Canada enacted the Non-Smokers Health Act. It was the first legislation that recognized and aimed to prevent the harm caused by second-hand smoke. The act forbade smokers from smoking in federal buildings and in transportation vehicles the government had jurisdiction over— such as airplanes, ships and trains.
The exemption for these bans was that smokers were allowed to smoke in allocated smoking sections. In 1994, Canada became the first country worldwide to ban smoking on all of flights.
In the 2000s, provinces also passed legislation to ban smoking from restaurants, bars, and patios.
Hasnain immigrated to Canada in 2013.
It felt as if I was smoking carbon. I couldn’t take it anymore. I just said like…oh my God, what have I been doing in the past.
–Ghulam Hasnain
“When I moved to Canada I came to know that these things were quite regulated over here and these [tobacco cigarettes] are not cheap at all,” Hasnain says.
Hasnain’s wife forbids him from smoking tobacco cigarettes in the house.
“The home and work environments are not such that you can smoke inside—you have to go outside… and brave the weather,” he says.
Hasnain tried to quit by using the patches and gums, which he says gave him stomach pains and caused his teeth to turn yellow.
Nicotine patches, gums or lozenges deliver nicotine through the skin or orally. Common side effects from these products include headaches, nausea and indigestion. Lozenges and gums can cause yellowing of teeth and in rare cases cracking of the teeth, though this is usually because the user is consuming or absorbing a substantial amount of nicotine.
It was a coincidence that the father of two children saw an opening for an accountant for cardiologist and vape shop owner Gopal Bhatnagar’s newly established online company 180Smoke.
His colleagues at his new job asked him to try vaping. After a week of vaping, the long-time cigarette addict tried a cigarette.
“It felt as if I was smoking carbon,” says Hasnain. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I just said like… oh my God, what have I been doing in the past.”
Hasnain says the switch to vaping changed life at home. He described how his children use to follow him to the balcony and catch him smoking.
“They’d follow me and would say ‘hey dad why are you smoking again. Man. That’s not on’,” he says about sneaking around his house when lighting up a tobacco cigarette.
Instead, he says, he can vape in his house and his wife and children are happy.
Still, Hasnain says he would never vape beside someone who was uncomfortable with the idea of an e-cigarette.
Vaping in public
“In public I would not. I would not go out in public and start throwing my vape on somebody’s face. I would not,” says Hasnain.
When it comes to where people are allowed to vape, it’s really quite simple — it’s either nowhere or everywhere.
Most provinces have banned vaping in public areas. This means vapers are not allowed to vape in spaces where smoking is not permitted. Saskatchewan, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador as well as the Yukon have no regulations about about vaping in public.
See chapter Canadian Context for more.
Generally, vapers cannot vape in restaurants and bars. In some provinces this extends to patios and terraces.
In British Columbia, vaping is illegal inside public buildings and on patios. As with cigarettes, e-cigarette usage in apartments, condos and parks depends on relevant local bylaws.
Alberta has no province-wide regulation on where e-cigarettes can and cannot be smoked. As a result, several municipalities – including Calgary, Edmonton and Red Deer – have taken matters into their own hands, drafting bylaws restricting vaping. Calgary and Edmonton passed bylaws banning e-cigarettes in all the same places tobacco is banned – including restaurants, bars and patios.
In Prince Edward Island, both cigarettes and e-cigarettes are banned from restaurants and patios, with the exception of 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. on patios. It also bars vaping on construction sites.
Nova Scotia and Quebec banned vaping in all restaurants and bar, including patios. In New Brunswick, users cannot be within 9 metres of the terrace.
In Manitoba, vaping is banned in public places such as offices, restaurants and bars. There is no ban on smoking on patios or outdoor spaces. E-cigarettes are therefore permissible on patios.
Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador have no bans for vaping on patios, though Saskatoon does.
David Sweanor fears overregulatng e-cigarettes is a disservice to public health, because it makes tobacco cigarettes readily available and puts barriers in the way of a healthier alternative. [Photo courtesy © Mike Mozart at Flickr]
While restaurants are subject to municipal and provincial legislation, airlines, trains and buses have been given final say on how electronic cigarettes should be regulated, because there have been no direct orders for regulation Transport Canada.
In February 2015, Transport Canada issued an advisory to airlines not to allow vapers to carry their electronic cigarettes in their checked baggage.
“Electronic cigarettes are being carried by passengers in increasing numbers. Several incidents have been reported involving e-cigarettes overheating through the accidental activation of their heating elements resulting in fires in checked baggage,” wrote Transport Canada in a statement.
While e-cigarettes are not allowed in checked baggage, Air Canada, West Jet, Air Transat, and Sunwing Airlines allow passengers to carry e-cigarettes but they cannot be used on board.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) allows vapers to bring e-cigarettes for personal use in their carry-on luggage or “on your person”. There are also strict instructions for how e-cigarette batteries are stored, while on a plane.
“Spare batteries must be protected so they won’t short-circuit. You are not allowed to recharge the e-cigarettes and/or batteries while you are on board the aircraft.”
Via Rail and Greyhound do not permit travellers to vape inside their vehicles.
Vaping is generally banned on most flights. Transportation of e-cigarettes on flights varies depending on the passenger’s luggage [Photo courtesy of © Michael Gil].
One of the growing concerns for Sarnia vape shop owner Martin Lacombe is that people will not be allowed to test the product in his vape shop, because vaping in enclosed spaces is banned under Ontario law. He’s afraid “enclosed spaces” may include his vape shop.
Some provinces have indeed banned the use of vaporizers and e-cigarettes inside public places. This means that vape shops are banned from allowing the customer to try vaping inside the shop.
Lacombe was a smoker for 25 years. He quit smoking the day he tried an e-cigarette. He was so pleased that he decided to work for E-steam in Ottawa. E-steam is an Ottawa-based online e-cigarette retailer. There are also nine physical E-steam stores; eight in the Ottawa area and one in Kingston.
In June 2015, Lacombe opened his own shop called Tugboat Vaping & Co.. Originally, it was located in a mall, but the vape shop owner was asked to leave the private property by the owners because they no longer wanted to have people vape inside the mall. The Sarnia mall acted pre-emptively before the Ontario legislation came out.
“What could I do? It’s a private company. They can do what they want. So I moved,” said Lacombe.
The vaping ban inside vape shops is already a reality in several provinces with regulations that treat e-cigarettes like tobacco.
Lacombe says nobody disagreed with the ban on selling to minors or preventing the use of e-cigarettes in public spaces. While he was not happy about leaving the mall, he did so without too much of a fight.
“But am I going to fight for my right to vape in my own store [which is not in a mall]? Hell yeah I am,” says Lacombe, as he vaped an e-cigarette.
Here’s the end of the story. Truth normally wins the day.
– Martin Lacombe
Stopping tobacco
Tobacco product use is the number one cause of preventable death in Canada, but the rate of smoking in Canada has dropped significantly. Statistics Canada says in 2009, 20.8 per cent of the Canadian population smoked. In 2014, the number dropped to 18.1 percent.
Where it did increase quite dramatically is in Nunavut. In 2009, more than half of the population, 54.4 per cent, reported smoking regularly. By 2014, 60.2 per cent of the population considered themselves smokers.
The World Health Organization estimates that seventy per cent of the deaths related to tobacco products occur in developing countries. Those in lower-income families, including young people, are more likely to smoke.
So why not just ban tobacco cigarettes altogether and prescribe electronic cigarettes to people who want to overcome the addiction?
Bhatnagar thinks one of the reasons for this is at least in part because of money.
In 2014 the federal government made almost $3.3 billion from tobacco taxes, according to Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada. Including provincial taxes on tobacco the total was more than $8 billion.
“Unfortunately, tobacco use was widely established before its tragic health consequences became known,” wrote Sara Lauer, spokesperson for Health Canada, in an email, after being asked why the government does not simply ban tobacco.
“The idea of banning cigarettes in Canada was first examined in the early 1960s. Today, as in the 1960’s, a ban on tobacco products would be extremely difficult to introduce and enforce, given that tobacco is used by millions of Canadians, many of whom are addicted,” Lauer says.
While smoking rates in Canada have dropped it would be misguided to think Big Tobacco is out for good. The optics of having Tobacco industry involved in the e-cigarettes business makes one question its intentions.
Despite his explicit hatred for the Tobacco industry Bhatnagar thinks he would be able to forgive them if they invested in e-cigarettes and moved away from tobacco.
“When people don’t know, you must respect that and educate them some other way,” says Hasnain.
More than addicts
E-cigarette users are not just smokers looking to quit smoking.
A most recent study on e-cigarettes suggests they can help people with serious mental illnesses quit smoking—such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. According to the study, people with serious mental illnesses have a harder time quitting than people without mental illnesses and may find it more difficult to quit through conventional nicotine replacement therapy.
According to 180smoke salesperson Keith Hucher, e-cigarettes have the potential help non-smokers.
He says ex-smokers who feel the urge to smoke come into the shop. He also says asthmatic smokers or diabetics looking for a sweet taste have wanted to try to vape.
Considering this, and the fact that most vapers are trying to get away from smoking, segregating vapers and asking them to sit at the smokers table may not be the best solution for public health.
David Sweanor compared sending vapers to a smoking section, to sending a recovering alcoholic to an AA meeting at a bar during happy hour.
The electronic cigarette as a tool is not the issue and e-cigarettes have shown potential to be a form of harm reduction. Instead, the problem is that unlike bottles of alcohol or needles which deliver the drug to the individual user, vaping is invasive and affects the public.
Yet, it would be misleading treat vapour the same way as tobacco smoke, because as Sweanor says it delivers a public message that vapour is as harmful as tobacco smoke. Still, because little is still known about the new product it is better to be safe than sorry. A possible compromise is, much safe injection sites, vapers could be given designated areas to vape.
A report done by the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact found the top three reasons for using e-cigarettes were to replace regular tobacco cigarettes, to quit smoking, and the limited restrictions on where they could vape versus smoking. The 2013 study was done before there were regulations on e-cigarettes and so there were more places available to vape.
For some, like Michael Hampartzoumian, Ghulam Hasnain and Adey Bailey, e-cigarettes were the only tool that helped them overcome the temptation and habit of smoking tobacco cigarettes. It halted their addiction to tobacco cigarettes and helped them control their nicotine addiction.
This project highlighted smokers as addicts struggling with an illness. For some, e-cigarettes help control their nicotine addiction and is a form of harm reduction.
The debate is about regulation and specifically what should be regulated. For vapers, it’s about what is in the product: what exactly is in the e-juice and how safe is their electronic device. For non-smoker advocate groups it’s having a clean air environment.
Still, some scholars like Stanton Glantz worry that future studies will reveal the dangers of e-cigarettes. This same fear has caused Health Canada to remain noncommittal to classifying e-cigarettes as a “smoking alternative.”
Addicts
People suffering from the damages of smoking have filed lawsuits against Big Tobacco. Most recently the Quebec Superior Court ruled against the three biggest tobacco companies in Quebec, in a province-wide class action-suit. The court ruled that the tobacco companies failed to warn users of the health risks associated with smoking.
During the lawsuit, tobacco companies claimed that the Federal Government was also liable, as it too failed to warn the general public of smoking’s damaging effects. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected this claim, ruling that the Federal Government could not be held liable for policy decisions.
Ultimately, Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald were ordered to pay the plaintiffs a total of $15 billion in damages. The due date for payment is June 2017.
The money will be distributed to two groups. The first is for smokers who developed a serious disease from smoking. Lung and throat cancer patients or their beneficiaries will be awarded $80,000 to $100,000. Patients with emphysema will be rewarded $24 000 to 30 000$. There were approximately 100,000 plaintiffs with emphysema or cancer.
The second plaintiffs were 918, 218 smokers who are unable to quit smoking are going to be given approximately $130 each.
If smokers are addicts who are struggling with an addiction and they want to use electronic cigarettes in public should that be allowed? The idea of having a someone vaping next to a non-smoker on an airplane or bus seems regressive after many years of work to limit smoking in public and counter the damaging first- and second-hand effects of cigarettes.
Do the rights of the majority and general protection for non-smokers supersede those of the minority in the vaping community?
Helping smokers quit tobacco cigarettes by vaping, as mentioned, could be seen as a potential harm reduction method. Yet, vaping is a very different treatment from what occurs in typical harm reduction centres, that are organized and isolated, in that vapour is emitted and then dissolves into the air.
But there will be no resolution to the question if the conversation revolves around the extremes; letting vapers vape everywhere or nowhere.
Bhatnagar, for example, suggested the creation of well-designed vaping rooms in the workplace, just like designated smoking areas.
Bhatnagar said vape rooms in public buildings would send a message to smokers that if they want to smoke they have to go outside, but if they want to vape they can stay inside.
“It’s about giving them a bigger incentive to make the switch,” says Bhatnagar.
They’d follow me and would say ‘hey dad why are you smoking again. Man. That’s not on.’
– Ghulam Hasnain, on his children's response to smoking cigarettes