If you happen to live and smoke in an apartment in Canada, your smoking and vaping days may soon be coming to an abrupt end. Health Canada is considering new anti-tobacco guidelines that could see a ban on smoking and vaping inside apartments, on post-secondary campuses and in public parks.
In addition to the broad-ranging ban, the new guidelines would see the legal age for buying tobacco products raised to 21.
According to the discussion paper, approximately 5 per cent of Canadians continue to use tobacco products, including an estimated 3.9 million smokers. Health Canada would like to see tobacco use cut to less than 5 per cent by the year 2035.
Approximately 37,000 Canadians die from smoking related illnesses every year – or about one person every 14 minutes. Additionally, smoking costs Canadians $17 billion in health care and indirect economic costs every year.
Possible Options
As part of a future strategy, the Government of Canada would continue to enforce key measures that protect youth. In addition to these, other measures could be considered:
- Raising the minimum age of access nationally – Collaborate with provincial and territorial counterparts to increase the minimum age to be sold tobacco to 21 years (recognizing that doing so would require careful consideration of age of access for non-medical cannabis).
- Tobacco addictiveness reduction – Develop regulatory options for reducing the addictiveness of tobacco products in order to prevent people from becoming users.
- Smoke- and vapour-free spaces – Work with partners to support broadening smoke- and vapour-free spaces, including bans on use on post-secondary campuses, in public parks, or in multi-unit dwellings. This work could also consider where cannabis could be smoked or vaporized.
- Contraband – In an effort to combat contraband tobacco over and above current actions, the federal government could work with partners to tighten controls around the supply and movement of materials needed to manufacture tobacco products as well as the actual sales of illicit tobacco.
Health Canada is seeking input from Canadians on the proposed measures until April 13, 2017.
It is imperative that if smoking is banned in apartments, that it be banned on balconies, as well. If it is not banned on balconies, everyone will smoke more on their balconies. I have severe allergies to compounds in cigarettes, and cannot stand any smoke coming into my window from neighbours smoking. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BAN SMOKING ON BALCONIES, TOO.
Thank you very very much.
I call BS. Many of those compounds are in your food and water. Have you given up eating and drinking water?
So how would you enforce this? Mandatory cameras in every bedroom, bathroom and closet? And then what? Make all Canadian smokers homeless?
A camera behind the mirror would do the trick. Or as in Germany in 1933 your neighbours would do the policing. The informed police would do the enforcing.
It works. Faced with the impossibility of banning tobacco they work at restricting where and when you can consume it. Squeezing from the user end rather than the production end as no one speaks for individual. This is tyranny in practice.
When govt. (or, worse yet if that’s possible, its appointed heads) can come into your home to force you to stop doing what is not only legal but traditionally so, it’s time to pay it the respect it is due. Bad laws are disobeyed by good people. When you hear their refrain in support of this — “there is no right to smoke” — please remember that there is equally no right to cook meat, light candles, drink beer or wine, have a television set, to have a dinner party, etc. They make it seem like nationally bestowed rights are unique to smoking by repeating that phrase when, in fact, it’s applicable to everything you choose to do. If you pick and choose rather than standing ground on a principle then everyone is next. Because when the so-called “Number one cause of….” is eliminated, the “number two cause” moves up to number one and there’s always a group (if not the same group) that will lead the charge against it.
This is now a class war against people with no power. I find it deeply saddening that the state is taking this action. The prohibitionists must be very pleased with themselves. One step closer to total criminalization.
J.O’Brien This rule is brought in under the guise of health. If you are more than 2 foot away it has nothing to do with health and “helping” smokers lead a healthier life.
You just don’t like the aesthetic, so you want something banned because you don’t like the cosmetic aspects.
What’s it like on your lofty cloud of self righteousness?
37,000 Canadians die from smoking-related illnesses. So ban smoking. Some die from vehicle accidents. So ban cars. Some die from alcohol-related illnesses. So ban alcohol. Some die from red meat-related illnesses. So ban red meat. Everyone dies from something. Ban everything. Left unchecked, the nanny state will just try to endlessly extend its power. This is outrageous.
Every Canadian should be against this. It doesn’t matter if you are for or against smoking, one should still speak out against the encroachment of any policy that smacks of Nannyism. Smoking now and what will next, it will grow to all aspects of our lives that will be eroded away from us. Everyone has things they enjoy that will be added to the list eventually and the only way to stop government encroaching into our lives is to reject all their attempts for the freedom of all.
Okay, I see the arguments for and against smoking but why ban vaping? There’s no way a person’s vapor could drift all the way into another person’s apartment – it dissipates way too fast. Secondly, there’s no evidence that they’ve been able to bring forward to indicate second-hand vapor can be harmful to other people. It’s also not the same thing as tobacco and it doesn’t leave a smell either.
Can’t tell if the person who wrote the article is just completely naive when comparing the two or if it’s Health Canada that is.