WORLD VAPE DAY 2025: LET'S CELEBRATE OUR PROGRESS AND KEEP WORKING TOWARDS A SMOKE FREE CANADA
OTTAWA, ON, May 30, 2025 /CNW/ - 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the first vapour products in North America. Rights4Vapers wishes to celebrate the lives saved thanks to these safer nicotine products as well as acknowledge that there is still much work to do to ensure that they remain available to adults who are looking for an alternative to deadly cigarettes.
"Vaping saves lives. I hear it from Canadians who vape every day. I am one of them," said Maria Papaioannoy, spokesperson for Rights4Vapers, Canada's largest vaping and safer nicotine advocacy movement. "Despite being severely regulated. Despite misinformation campaigns from public health groups. Despite a continued and profound misunderstanding of nicotine. Despite push back against tobacco harm reduction. Vapour products are still here, thanks to the vocal advocacy of users."
Vapes were invented in China in 2003 to deliver nicotine as a vapour, arriving in Europe and the US and Canada around 2005.
Statistics Canada surveys between 2017 and 2022, revealed the smoking rate dropped by just over four percentage points, while the vaping rate increased by three. In just four years, approximately one million Canadians shifted their nicotine habits. Notably, daily smoking among teens has now fallen to under one percent.
"Canadians who vape know that these products have saved their lives. Every Canadian adult who smokes deserves access to safer nicotine choices. This could be a vape, a pouch, gum or patch," said Ms. Papaioannoy. "Nicotine is not the villain. Combustion is. We need drastic reforms in how safer nicotine products are regulated."
Rights4Vapers is calling on the federal government to develop a Safer Nicotine Act where all safer nicotine products are regulated fairly and equally, focusing on who needs them—not on who produces them. It's not the government's role to dictate how Canadians should quit smoking; it's the government's responsibility to ensure that all products are safe, regulated, and kept out of the hands of minors.
Safer nicotine products including vapour products and nicotine pouches are the best hope for millions of Canadians who smoke and are looking for an alternative to cigarettes. In 2021, Public Health England released its latest review of vapour studies. It found that "the best thing that a smoker can do is to stop smoking completely and the evidence shows that vaping is one of the most effective quit aids available, helping around 50,000 smokers quit a year."
SOURCE Rights 4 Vapers
View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2025/30/c8598.html
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Rick Mercer's long finished ‘Talking to Americans,' but he's got new ways to address neighbourly tension
TORONTO - Rick Mercer picks up the bottle of sparkling water he just ordered, puts on his glasses and inspects the label. 'Where's that from? We're not having that in the shot if it's American. Jeez,' he says, glancing at the video camera with an impish smile. It's a product of Italy, but he moves it out of the shot anyway. 'Are we rolling?' We are. On this Tuesday afternoon in late spring, Mercer sits in a booth by the window at a Toronto restaurant. The sparkling water, his now-discarded reading glasses and some notes he doesn't reference are the only things in front of him as he promotes his new comedy tour, 'Stand-Up for Canada,' which gets underway in September. The show's message, he says, meets the moment: one in which U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed punishing tariffs on Canada and threatened this country's sovereignty. 'That has permeated almost every aspect of our lives, but it actually hasn't impacted my act at all. I'm doing the same act,' he says. 'I decided a long time ago that everything I do was going to be celebrating the country.' Mercer believes people are looking for that now more than ever, given the animosity that's developed between Canada and the United States: a relationship that is in some ways foundational to our national self-image. 'If you want to have that conversation about what it means to someone to be Canadian, you've really got to dig because the first thing that nine out of 10 Canadians will do is they'll start talking about how we're different than Americans, which is no way to define yourself,' he says. 'What's happening in the country now — people are standing in the middle of drugstores Googling what's a Canadian toothpaste, and they're reading labels in the ways that they've never read before, and their making choices about whether they'll eat a kiwi fruit — that's new. But I think it's always been there: Canadians, we're a proud country, there's no doubt about it.' Playing off of this cross-border kinship is part of how Mercer became a household name north of the 49th parallel. His wildly popular segment 'Talking to Americans' took off on CBC's 'This Hour Has 22 Minutes' and spawned an hour-long comedy special in April 2001. More than two million viewers tuned into the special to watch Mercer ask Americans leading questions about Canada based on ludicrous stereotypes. Would they consider a visit to our national igloo? What do they think of Canada's national dish, the beaver ball? 'It really was one joke over and over again, but it was a joke that Canadians really enjoyed,' he says. The execution of that joke relied on two things, Mercer says: Americans' ignorance about Canada and their goodwill towards Canadians. 'I was aware that by and large Americans knew nothing about Canada. But they did know we were the neighbours, and they wanted to be only generous and kind to the neighbours,' he says. 'That has clearly changed somewhat. People are very suspicious of Canada. I think Americans are more suspicious of everyone, both inside their country, their neighbours, and then outside their country as well.' That Americans are looking more closely at Canada is one of many reasons the bit wouldn't work today, Mercer says. The list also includes the general mistrust in mainstream media and the likelihood that once-unsuspecting Americans might recognize him from online clips. For his purposes, that's OK. It seems like it's time to look inward rather than measuring ourselves against others, he says: 'In order for Canada to be good, Denmark doesn't have to be bad.' The temptation to focus on the giant underneath us is ever-present, but Mercer is practised at resisting it. He left 'Talking to Americans' behind when he launched his flagship TV show, 'Rick Mercer Report,' in 2004. Over the course of 15 seasons, he travelled across the country, poking fun at politicians along the way. 'When I was doing 'Mercer Report,' one of the big learning curves that writers who worked on the show had to deal with was that in our universe that we created, America didn't exist. Like, it really didn't. We were just like, 'we don't talk about that.'' Americans got enough attention elsewhere, he says, so if the show talked about entertainment, it wouldn't be American entertainment. If it talked politics, it wouldn't be American politics. Whether his September tour will take the same tack remains to be seen. It's early yet, he says, but he doesn't foresee dunking on the United States overmuch. Tickets go on sale later this week, but he isn't due to hit the road until Sept. 11, performing 22 shows in 38 days alongside comedians Sophie Buddle, Mayce Galoni and Julie Kim. This is Mercer's third standup tour. He's leaned into live performance since leaving TV behind in 2018. Last year, he toured in conversation with musician Jann Arden. He also wrote two memoirs, 'Talking to Canadians,' about everything leading up to 'Rick Mercer Report,' and 'The Road Years' about the time he spent on the show. 'If you're in my business, if you're creating TV shows, if you're doing one-man shows — which I used to do in my early 20s — if you're writing books, if you're writing scripts, it really helps if you love your subject matter. And my subject matter has always been my country,' he says. 'And I'm not saying it's perfect, not by a long shot. It's just, that's someone else's lane. Right now it's all about celebrating.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2025.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Canada's wildfires may impact gas prices: here's how
As the Canadian wildfires continue to rage, some oil production in the country, a U.S. supplier, has been forced to shut down, raising concerns national gas prices may rise. Around 95 fires were out of control in Canada on Monday afternoon, with more than half burning in the province of Alberta, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Bloomberg reports the fires in Alberta have shut down nearly 350,000 barrels of daily heavy crude oil production, roughly 7 percent of Canada's oil output. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told The Independent that if the oil production shutdown continues, 'it could be a bit more problematic to [U.S.] refineries and it could be more impactful to things like gasoline.' Canada is the fourth-largest oil producer in the world and a major supplier to the U.S. The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a major trade association, said in a blog post from January that 25 percent of crude oil in U.S. refineries comes from Canada. Refineries need heavy crude oil to run and make petroleum products such as gasoline. The trade association said in another blog post, 'Nearly 70% of U.S. refining capacity runs most efficiently with heavier crude.' De Haan told MarketWatch in March, 'Canada's oil has always been there, and it's always been there at a discount.' The fires have displaced thousands and are causing air quality alerts in several U.S. states. The wildfires have now threatened the country's oil output, potentially affecting the national average gas price, which currently stands at $3.09 per gallon, according to GasBuddy. Cenovus Energy Inc., a Canadian oil producer, shut down output on May 29, according to Bloomberg. It said Sunday that it expects to resume operations in the 'near term.' Two other Canadian oil producers, MEG Energy Corp. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., have also temporarily ceased operations. De Hann explained in a phone interview with The Independent on Monday that much of the crude oil in U.S. refineries in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains comes from Canada. ' So, a shutdown in the flow of oil, or at least a partial shutdown in the flow of oil from Canada, could be impactful to refineries down in these regions,' he said. De Hann said refineries usually have at least several days of crude oil stored, 'but if this hit to Canadian oil production continues for potentially more than a week or two, and/or if it worsens in terms of the amount of oil shut in, it could be a bit more problematic to these refineries and it could be more impactful to things like gasoline.' ' I don't really see any impact to prices, but we will have to see,' the expert added. De Hann warned since there's less Canadian oil available, 'it's likely narrowing the Canadian crude oil discount that generally we see, but that's not really going to be too impactful to motorists.' The U.S. still makes 60 percent of its crude oil, according to American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, and it gets the other 17 percent of its oil from other countries. There were 189 active fires in Canada as of Monday afternoon, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Most are in British Columbia and Alberta. The fires have burned through roughly 1.7 million acres across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, The New York Times reported, citing the center. Two people were killed in a wildfire that burned through a small Manitoba town, the Times reported. CBS reported on Sunday that more than 25,000 residents have been evacuated over the fires and smoke was worsening air quality in Canada. The fires have also caused air quality alerts in Minnesota, Michigan and South Carolina, which remained in place Monday, per NBC News. Pollutants can cause health risks, especially for those with a respiratory disease such as asthma.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'90s Pop Icon, 56, Stuns Fans With Shocking Appearance
'90s Pop Icon, 56, Stuns Fans With Shocking Appearance originally appeared on Parade. Sarah McLachlan, 56, has clearly found the fountain of youth. The '90s pop icon and Lilith Fair regular shared a social media video over the weekend that had fans doing a double take at the Canadian songstress's ageless Fumbling Towards Ecstasy singer posted a video in which she answers random questions to help fans get to know her better. Wearing an adorable white jumpsuit, her hair swept up in a messy bun, and sporting little to no makeup, McLachlan put her natural beauty on full display. She effortlessly shared her answers, even revealing a personal pre-show ritual. 'Melissa and I, um… we smack each other really hard on the bum — just wakes us up!' McLachlan revealed, before laughing and admitting she may have overshared. Fans were quick to notice her toned arms, with one commenting, 'Those arms — whoa 🤯 ❤️,' and another adding, 'You are so cool and timeless. Also, your arms!!! They are so strong. 💪🏻💪🏻❤️❤️❤️'McLachlan shares two daughters with her ex-husband, Ashwin Sood. She recently celebrated 30 years since the release of Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 '90s Pop Icon, 56, Stuns Fans With Shocking Appearance first appeared on Parade on Jun 1, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 1, 2025, where it first appeared.
