LETTER: Surrey picked the wrong target for their war on vaping<\/p>\n
Published 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2026<\/p>\n
Editor,<\/p>\n
Surrey city council has voted to \u201cwage war on <\/a>vaping.\u201d<\/a> Coun. Gordon Hepner\u2019s motion directs staff to bring forward the most restrictive legally supportable bylaw package possible, including banning vapour product sales in convenience stores and gas stations and limiting them to 19-plus specialty retailers. <\/p>\n No one should dismiss the concerns raised in council chambers. Youth vaping is a serious issue. Councillors spoke about what they are seeing around schools, about the risks of nicotine dependence and impacts on concentration and mental health. Those concerns deserve serious responses.<\/p>\n But serious responses must be grounded in evidence.<\/p>\n In the same week council approved this motion, Health Canada released national inspection data covering April 2024 to March 2025. The findings are clear.<\/p>\n Among 546 specialty vape stores inspected across Canada, 43 percent were found selling illicit or otherwise illegal products. Health inspectors seized products from 235 of those establishments. The most common violations involved prohibited flavours, endorsements and testimonials, improper health warnings and products exceeding Canada\u2019s 20 mg\/ml nicotine limit. The year before, 38 percent of specialty vape shops were found selling illicit or non-compliant products. The trend is worsening.<\/p>\n Now compare that with gas stations and convenience stores.<\/p>\n Health Canada conducted on-site inspections at 2,354 of those retailers. Of the 2,136 selling vaping products, fewer than one percent, just 12 stores, were found to be selling illicit or illegal products. The previous year, the rate was 3.2 percent.<\/p>\n In other words, the retail channel Surrey is proposing to ban has the strongest compliance record in the country.<\/p>\n The channel council appears to favour, specialty vape shops, is where federal inspectors are finding the highest levels of illicit product activity.<\/p>\n That is not rhetoric. That is federal enforcement data.<\/p>\n If youth protection is the objective, council should ask a straightforward question. Why remove products from the most compliant retail environment and concentrate them in the one where illicit activity is most prevalent?<\/p>\n The issue Canada faces is not a lack of regulation. We already have strict national limits on nicotine concentration. We already prohibit certain flavours. We already regulate packaging, promotion and age verification.<\/p>\n What is missing is consistent, enforceable federal leadership to close the gaps that provinces and municipalities cannot address on their own.<\/p>\n Health Canada\u2019s report also found that 45 percent of vaping product samples collected from manufacturers were illicit or otherwise illegal under federal rules, with 44 percent exceeding nicotine concentration limits. Investigators seized nearly 287,000 illicit vaping products from manufacturers during that period.<\/p>\n That is where the focus should be.<\/p>\n Municipalities cannot shut down illegal online vendors shipping illicit products directly to homes. They cannot control manufacturers exceeding nicotine limits. They cannot police social media marketplaces selling illicit disposables that ignore Canadian law. That requires coordinated federal and provincial enforcement. This is why federal action matters. Increase flavour restrictions, as well as enforce a national ban of online sales of vaping products would immediately cut off the primary channels through which youth access illicit products, bypassing age verification entirely. Municipal bylaws cannot do that. Federal law can.<\/p>\n What Surrey can do is avoid policies that unintentionally weaken the regulated, inspected retail network that is actually complying with the law.<\/p>\n Driving legal products out of convenience stores will not eliminate youth demand. It risks pushing more consumers toward online sellers and specialty outlets where illicit products are already a documented problem.<\/p>\n Youth protection is not achieved by rearranging which storefronts are allowed to operate. It is achieved by cracking down on illicit operators, increasing inspections, seizing illegal products and ensuring that repeat offenders face meaningful penalties.<\/p>\n We support strong enforcement. We support strict age verification. We support holding retailers accountable when they break the law.<\/p>\n But targeting the most compliant retail channel while illicit activity continues elsewhere does not solve the problem.<\/p>\n A war on vaping may generate headlines. Federal leadership against illicit activity would protect youth.<\/p>\n Eric Gagnon, vice-president, corporate and regulatory affairs, Imperial Tobacco Canada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LETTER: Surrey picked the wrong target for their war on vaping Published 7:30 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-528297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}