Clean air is essential to good health. Breathing in pollutants leads to inflammation and stresses our bodies, directly affecting our lungs, heart, brain and other organs, leading to disease.
While we have made progress keeping our lungs healthy by reducing tobacco use over the years.
We risk losing this progress in the younger generation because of a failure to protect youth from the dangers of vaping.
For years, we were also told that e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes, but those claims were made with little empirical data. New research analyzing the actual health effects shows that for many diseases, e-cigarettes are nearly or just as bad as smoking.[1]
We ask the provincial government to:
- Renew BC’s Tobacco and Vaping Strategy.
- Raise the legal smoking and vaping age to 21.
- Ban candy and fruit flavours that hook kids on vaping.
- Increase smoke-free housing options in multi-unit homes like condos and townhouses.
- Expand active transportation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and improve local air quality.
- Make sure new housing developments incorporate trees, green spaces and parks.
- Raise the legal smoking and vaping age to 21.
- Ban candy and fruit flavours that hook kids on vaping.
- Increase smoke-free housing options in multi-unit homes like condos and townhouses.
- Expand active transportation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and improve local air quality.
- Make sure new housing developments incorporate trees, green spaces and parks.
[1] Population-Based Disease Odds for E-Cigarettes and Dual Use versus Cigarettes https://evidence.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/EVIDoa2300229