PLAYING WITH WORDS - HEALTH CANADA'S REPLY TO OUR LATEST APPEAL TO RECONSIDER THEIR STAND ON E-CIGARETTES

Here is Health Canada’s reply to our latest appeal to them to reconsider their stand on electronic cigarettes. 

Health Products and Food Branch 

Inspectorate

Graham Spry Building, 3rd Floor

250 Lanark Avenue

Address Locator #2003C

Ottawa, Ontario

K1A 0K9

July 11, 2011

Thank you for your correspondence dated April 30, 2011 and your request that Health Canada reconsiders its controversial stand on banning the import and marketing of electronic nicotine delivery devices commonly known as e-cigarettes.  We apologize for the delay in our response. 

 

The recent U.S. FDA announcement about its intent to regulate electronic cigarettes as tobacco products when not associated with therapeutic claims will not change the regulation of electronic cigarette products in Canada.  Analysis of the US decision indicate that it is based on very different wording found in the United States Tobacco Act compared to the Canadian Tobacco Act.

Electronic cigarettes will continue to fall within the scope of the Food and Drugs Act because they deliver nicotine, a drug, to a consumer.  All other nicotine containing products, other than naturally sourced nicotine in cigarettes, cigars, etc, have been assessed under the Food and Drug Regulations.  Currently since all approved nicotine products are now non-prescription drugs they fall under the Natural Health Products Regulations.   However, nicotine intended for an electronic cigarette is not exempted from prescription status.  Accordingly, market authorization must be granted by Health Canada prior to the importation and sale of these products in Canada.  In this regard, Health Canada’s approach is in line with the recommendations of the World Health Organisation. 

Yours Truly,

Diana Dowthwaite

Director General 

It is quite clear that according to Health Canada the health of an individual is at the mercy of ‘’different wording’’ and ‘’different acts’’ and that all that matters is that a substance contained in a product occurs naturally as opposed to being extracted from the plant and added to a delivery device.   Little does it matter to Health Canada that that is precisely the process the pharmaceutical industry uses to manufacture different nicotine delivery devices such as inhalers, patches, gums and lozenges and it matters even less to them that the tobacco industry has been (rightly or wrongly) under attack for years for free-basing nicotine to give it a more potent ‘’hit’’ and that there is nothing ‘’natural’’ about that process.  Irrelevant to them that thousands if not millions of smokers throughout the world who wanted to quit have successfully managed to do so with a device that has so far not only proven to be many times more effective than pharmaceutical overpriced nicotine replacement therapy but that has also no documented case of harm since its approximately 7-year existence. 

Dear fellow citizens, the next time your father, aunt, uncle, or grandmother complain that smoking conventional cigarettes worsens their emphysema symptoms yet they find it impossible to renew their supply of nicotine for their e-cigarette because Health Canada does not approve of harm reduction, please set them straight immediately and stress to them that ‘’emphysema’’ is now called COPD and that wording is of utmost importance when one wants to improve their health.    

CAN THE STATE STEAL OUR KIDS WITHOUT DUE PROCESS?

A 9-year old child was removed from her father without due process and medicated with anti-psychotic drugs within 70 hours.  The child is autistic, does not require medication and according to the father the only reason she was removed from him was because she wandered off to the neighbor’s backyard and after he searched for her for 20 minutes, he called the police for help.  According to BC Child Protection Services, the father is too overwhelmed to properly look after his daughter. 

Since Child Protection Services refuse to comment, this of course is only the father’s side of the story.  However, whatever the other side of the story is, nothing can justify that the child gets separated from her father with only a picture of him to appease her worries and medicated without the father’s consent and all this without prior legal process.  The father has no idea how long it will take before the judicial system hears his case and returns his daughter to him.  Meanwhile the child’s mental and physical health is compromised. 

This should be of great concern to all of us.  If we allow the state to get away with such actions, there is no telling how many families will one day live the same tragedy as the Hoares.  

Find out how you can help here :  http://www.facebook.com/groups/152278868178942

 

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION

Guest commentary by Andrew Phillips - Libertarian Party of Canada - Ontario Libertarian Party, on an article that appeared in the New York Daily News titled Unlicensed vendors flood area beaches, turning city shores into open-air marketplaces
 

Well the economic law of unforeseen circumstances is certainly at work here!

Nobody ever thought of this happening as the social engineers creating laws are so far removed from the real world. This is the free market at work it's chaotic, unorganized, and worst of all for the social engineers, it works. If the market place (the customers) weren't there the suppliers (the vendors) wouldn't be there as well. Whoever showed up first is not all that important as a market was there to be created and the two principals the customers and the vendors found each other. As there are a lot of vendors they are in direct competition with each other. Thus prices are kept down through competition. In all cases the free market is controlled by the consumer and the purchases they decide to make based on their own needs and / or wants. You're not paying for a government service you have no use for, the salary of the people who supply the service you have no use for, and inflated prices and shoddy service that are the end result of any monopoly.

Here if a vendor screws somebody they would lose their market share. What is also funny is Bloomberg the mayor brought in the smoking bans on public beaches but budget cuts have gutted the people who were supposed to do the enforcing. You have to wonder if any of those vendors might be laid-off enforcement officers who are using the free market to better their own situation. Recently a newspaper article here pointed out the underground economy in Canada has been estimated at 36 billion dollars a year. I'd like to know what the real amount actually is if they'll even admit to that amount in the first place. Markets like this were a permanent fixture in the old Soviet Union as the central planners were completely unable to control the supply of 24 million market items.

I enjoy the irony in this line towards the end of the article, "A guy who doesn't pay rent, he takes business away from the restaurant who pays rent. There should be some more enforcement." What took the business away from those establishments in the first place was enforcement of a ban that they didn't want. That violated their property rights and in many cases forced them out of business or facing the law of diminishing returns. Unwanted social engineering was, and remains, the real problem. In all cases the social engineers are cocooned from the economic fallout of bad decisions by mostly working for the government. However bring in enough bad laws and even they will feel the effects of diminishing returns from the rise of the
underground unfettered free market.

After all, water in the real world always finds its own level.