Home > Editorial – Towards a Canadian evidence base to inform action to prevent and control vaping in Canada.

O'Loughlin, Jennifer L and Gagné, Thierry (2022) Editorial – Towards a Canadian evidence base to inform action to prevent and control vaping in Canada. Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada, 42, (1), https://doi.org/10.24095/hpcdp.42.1.01.

External website: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/re...

The upsurge in the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) in the past decade is a critical issue for tobacco control, characterized by rapidly changing ENDS technologies, shifting usage patterns and contradictory evidence on the added value of vaping products... There is now solid international and homegrown evidence that vulnerability to ENDS uptake in youth is similar to, if not higher than, that of tobacco uptake, and this has serious implications for population health in Canada. Three directions for action emerge from this set of papers. First, we can optimally protect young people by applying the set of stringent and comprehensive demand-side measures that have helped reduce tobacco initiation. Second, because Canada’s ENDS market is difficult to monitor, assess and regulate, measures to bring supply under better public health management need to be prioritized. The option of limiting ENDS products to a therapeutic supply (for quitting or harm reduction) should be further explored. Third, much more evidence is needed on the short- and long-term consequences of using ENDS, a knowledge gap that can only be addressed if there is sustained support for surveillance and longitudinal research. We hope that Canada’s health authorities recognize the important contribution of the five papers presented herein and use the findings to strengthen their policy and programmatic approaches to addressing the enduring public health challenge of nicotine addiction.

Special issue: Tobacco control and Canada’s endgame, part II