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Guest column: Nicotine pouches are not helping Canadian smokers quit – despite Big Tobacco propaganda

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Re: Opinion: Cigarette maker says Ottawa makes it harder to quit smoking (Feb. 4)

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By: Cynthia Callard, Flory Doucas, Les Hagen

Frank Silva, CEO of Imperial Tobacco Canada, the country’s largest tobacco manufacturer, argues that Ottawa’s move to restrict the sale of its Zonnic nicotine pouches to pharmacies in 2024 makes it “harder, not easier, for adult smokers to quit” and pushes smokers towards the illegal market.

This and many other similar industry opinion pieces are part of a broad and intensified industry-led propaganda campaign aimed at weakening restrictions. These efforts are largely based on the assumptions that pouches are helping smokers quit and that their purchase through pharmacies is somehow challenging for smokers.

Pressure tactics also include full-page ads, official and unofficial petitions, astroturf mobilization campaigns and legal challenges. Alongside these efforts, new groups with undisclosed funding, such as bringbackthepouches.ca, quitclub.com and iwantmypouches.ca, have joined in the lobbying onslaught.

Interestingly, the Canadian experience with these products to date suggests they are not helping smokers quit but are instead helping tobacco companies recruit new nicotine addicts, including youths. If anything, stronger, not weaker, controls are required.

An analysis of data from the Canadian Community Health Survey, the largest health survey conducted by Statistics Canada, reveals that of the two million Canadian smokers who had tried to quit in the previous year, only six per cent (117,000) used nicotine pouches. Of these, the number who reported successfully quitting smoking was too small (fewer than 26 in the CCHS sample) to provide a reportable estimate. The estimated proportion of failed quit attempts with a quit-smoking aid was highest among pouch users at 92%.

In other words, very few Canadian smokers are using pouches in their quit attempts, and those who do appear less likely to succeed than those going cold turkey or using conventional stop-smoking treatments.

And while Big Tobacco touts the supposed cessation benefits of nicotine pouches, they inevitably fail to mention the impacts they have on new generations of young Canadians.

A recent study based on the Compass survey of Quebec high school students concluded that “nicotine pouches appear to be gaining popularity among Canadian youth.” It cautioned that they “have considerable potential to follow the same popularity trajectory as e-cigarettes.” Despite their limited availability on the Quebec market (due to earlier provincial restrictions), students were almost as likely to report using pouches as cigarettes in the last 30 days.

Meanwhile, Canadian data from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Youth Tobacco and Vaping Survey found that young people are primarily motivated to use nicotine pouches “for fun,” “out of curiosity,” and for the drug’s effects. As a means to “quit smoking” was the least invoked reason.

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As it stands, the promotion of nicotine pouches is no threat to cigarette sales revenues, which remain as high as ever, while pouches are gaining popularity among non-smokers, especially youth. Pushing ineffective cessation tools is a logical part of the tobacco industry’s shameless business plan, as manufacturers profit both from smoking and addiction to novel nicotine products.

That the tobacco industry continues to mislead the public and governments about the health impacts of its products comes as no surprise. However, it’s alarming to see federal members of Parliament fall for Big Tobacco’s disinformation hook, line and sinker, going so far as to call for weaker controls on these addictive products.

Indeed, one MP launched what qualifies as a Philip Morris product endorsement campaign, while another launched a petition calling for the regulation of nicotine pouches to be struck down.

The Canadian government and MPs are not immune to pressure from tobacco companies and their allies. The federal government’s disastrous collaboration with Philip Morris on a doomed COVID-19 vaccine is one such example.

At the very least, political support for the industry’s propaganda should stop, and the primary focus should be on protecting kids from nicotine addiction.

The current rules for nicotine pouches should be maintained, with enforcement actions intensified. Furthermore, regulatory efforts should be ramped up to reduce all forms of nicotine use by young people, namely youth vaping, a phenomenon that remains widespread due to the federal government’s inaction on flavours and other predatory marketing practices.

Cynthia Callard is executive director, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada; Flory Doucas, is co-director, Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control; Les Hagen is executive director, Action on Smoking & Health (ASH Canada).

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