OP-ED: RFK Jr. is right on nicotine pouches, while Canada barrels ahead with bad policy
David Clement writes, "RFK Jr. is right on one thing: nicotine pouches. In an interview he stated that nicotine pouches are ‘probably the safest way to consume nicotine.'"
By David Clement
RFK Jr, America’s Health and Human Services Secretary has a laundry list of wildly false views. He’s suggested that WIFI causes ‘leaky brain’ and cancer, that pesticides and chemicals make children transgender, that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that Lyme Disease is a bioweapon. These views might be surprising to some, but not to others, especially when he’s publicly stated that "A worm ... got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died."
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But despite all of this nonsense, RFK Jr. is right on one thing: nicotine pouches. In an interview he stated that nicotine pouches are ‘probably the safest way to consume nicotine’ and that “nicotine itself does not cause cancer, there is no evidence that nicotine is carcinogenic”. On this issue, RFK is spot on, and Canada should also embrace these facts.
In comparison to cigarettes, nicotine pouches are exponentially less risky. On a harm scale, with 100 representing smoking risk and zero representing not consuming any product with nicotine, German researchers gave nicotine pouches a score of one, exactly the same as the risk from nicotine patches, gums and sprays. This truth was also echoed by Scott Gottlieb, former Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration.
In fact, Health Canada itself already acknowledged this when they approved nicotine pouches as a tool to help smokers quit, treating them equally, from a regulatory standpoint, as the nicotine gums, patches and lozenges that have been on that market for decades.
That brief moment of sanity from Health Canada was, unfortunately, overridden by former Health Minister Mark Holland. Holland was so outraged by Health Canada’s decision that the Liberals under Trudeau amended the Canada Health Act to give the Minister of Health the authority to override Health Canada approvals. The result? Nicotine pouches were removed from convenience stores and gas stations, limited to just being sold in pharmacies, and all flavours except for mint were banned.
These changes, if you want to reduce smoking rates, are counter productive, and downright hypocritical. They are counter-productive because less risky alternatives need to be sold alongside cigarettes so that smokers can be prompted to buy them, and quit smoking. It’s hypocritical because if we trust convenience stores to sell cigarettes, which are 99 per cent more harmful, how on earth could we not trust them to responsibly sell nicotine pouches? Why would it be permissible for those stores to sell cigarettes, which cause cancer, and not sell tobacco-free nicotine pouches, which do not cause cancer? No one, at least in Ottawa, has ever been able to give any sort of convincing justification for this.
And on the issue of pouches helping people quit, these aren’t hypotheticals. The country of Sweden is a perfect example of a country that embraces nicotine pouches as a less harmful alternative, and is reaping the health benefits because of it. Sweden’s smoking rate is now down to five per cent. Canada, in comparison, has a smoking rate of around 10 per cent. Pouches have been a Swedish staple for decades. In the late 1970s, when 40 per cent of Swedish men were still smoking, pouches began a quiet revolution. Today, a third of male ex-smokers credit these low-risk alternatives with their liberation from cigarettes, and studies confirm that those who start with pouches are far less likely to take up smoking. The result? Sweden is the only country in Europe where lung cancer isn’t at the top of the list for cancer mortality. Lung cancer is also less prevalent in Sweden than anywhere else in Europe. In Canada, by contrast, lung cancer is the leading cancer killer. Well over 20,000 Canadians die from it every year. Cigarettes have been displaced in Sweden, smoking-related illnesses have plummeted and Sweden’s public health is the envy of the world. Would it not be wise to copy and paste that success story for Canada?
Despite RFK’s bizarre views on everything from vaccines to WIFI, he is right when it comes to nicotine pouches, and Sweden is the case study of success. It is time for Ottawa to get its head out of the sand, and embrace pouches for what they are: as a useful tool to help people quit smoking.
David Clement is the North American Affairs Manager with the Consumer Choice Center
The sneers against RFK JR. in the first and last paragraphs of this story are irrelevant to the story and in bad taste. Save your hit pieces for the MSM Mr. Clement. They are less welcome here.
Great way to start an article in which you are trying to convince people of a change needed: “RFK Jr, America’s Health and Human Services Secretary has a laundry list of wildly false views.” Juvenile. You could leave all that stuff out and just concentrate on the message.