By Ashley Legassic

Canadian tobacco company advocating for more consumer information on vaping

Jan 22, 2019 | 4:10 PM

VANCOUVER — A Canadian tobacco company has paid a visit to BC as part of a campaign surrounding vaping.

Eric Gagnon with Imperial Tobacco Canada says he did reach out to the Ministry of Health for a meeting in Vancouver, but didn’t get a response.

The company’s aim for this trip was to advocate for vaping, which they say is less harmful than traditional cigarette smoking.

“We know that there’s a number of our consumers that do want to quit smoking and we recognize that that can sometimes be difficult,” Gagnon says. “So I think it’s just reasonable and it’s our responsibility to continue investing and trying to put those less harmful products on the market for consumers that do want to switch.”

Gagnon says provinces like Ontario have embraced vaping as an alternate solution, and he hopes the same will happen for BC.

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He says the choice to embrace vaping over traditional cigarettes makes the most sense for tobacco companies at this point — with more health risks being realized about cigarettes.

“It’s been a number of years that we’ve been either challenged or pressured by health groups to try to find solutions that are less harmful than cigarettes,” he says. “I think we’re there now. I think the first vaping products that came to the market were not so much meeting the consumer needs but I think with all the efforts that have been done, the product has evolved significantly and now we believe we have good products that actually meet the consumer needs.”

Gagnon says vaping is less harmful than actually smoking cigarettes, and believes it opens a whole new market for tobacco companies. According to a Johns Hopkins Medicine article, vaping is in fact less harmful than cigarettes, although it’s still bad for you.

“It makes sense to try to put on the market alternative solutions that are potentially less harmful, we know that there’s a number of our consumers that do want to quit smoking and we recognize that that can sometimes be difficult,” he says. “So I think it’s just reasonable and it’s our responsibility to continue investing and trying to put those less harmful products on the market for consumers that do want to switch.”