I knew we were going to find illegal nicotine pouches in Ontario. I just didn’t think we’d find this many even in the most remote parts of the province.
When we started this adventure the plan was: pile into an RV, drive across Canada, talk about nicotine policy and see what the market actually looks like outside the Ottawa bubble. I knew that we would find pouches, I just didn’t know how easy it would be.
Let me break down the numbers. We visited 15 stores in Ontario. At 12 we bought pouches. That’s an 80% success rate. All in all we came out of Ontario with 42 tins. Also this wasn’t just one brand, we found different products everywhere we went. There are no duplication. Each of the 42 products is unique in this haul.
We found nicotine pouches ranging from 6 mg to 50 mg. We found Gummy Bears. Skittles. Peach Bellini. Cotton Candy. We found packages covered in warnings and labeling from different countries.
Every time I walked back to the RV with another bag of pouches, I found myself laughing. Not because any of this is particularly funny, but because I kept thinking about those silly, full-of-themselves tobacco-control moralists yelling and screaming, demanding that Mark Holland get rid of them. These people wouldn’t hold themselves accountable if they were burning at the stake of Bloomberg
In August 2024, the federal government restricted Canada’s authorized nicotine pouches to pharmacies. The argument was that we needed to protect young people. I couldn’t agree more, Kids shouldn’t be using nicotine. Full stop.
Protecting young people and making regulated products unnecessarily difficult for adults to access are not the same thing. Tobacco Control in Canada, when it comes to safer nicotine products, has predictably been short-sighted, uninformed, and reliant on emotional manipulation to get its way, while taking zero accountability when those same policies fail.
And nothing has failed more quickly or more emphatically than the regulation of nicotine pouches in Canada.I am literally sitting in an RV with 42 examples of exactly how it failed.
I’ve been a safer-nicotine advocate for a long time. Sometimes I think people hear “nicotine advocate” and imagine that I’m standing on a street corner yelling, MORE NICOTINE FOR EVERYONE! I promise you, I’m not. This has always been about something much more personal for me.
It’s about people who smoke. It’s about people who aren’t ready or able to stop using nicotine but desperately want to stop inhaling smoke. It’s about giving adults choices that might help them move away from cigarettes. And yes, it’s about making sure those products are properly regulated and kept away from kids. Those things can exist at the same time. That shouldn’t be controversial.
Good public policy shouldn’t just sound good when it’s announced, it has to work in the real world.
That’s really what this entire trip is about. Not who is rights, not laying blame (well all the blame) Not proving that we were right (but we were)
We want Mark Carney and Minister Michel to move past this mistake from the past and get Health Canada to fix this. I know there is a sensible middle ground that will strike the balance. I think step one is to take a honest look at what is happening and fix it. Here are some of my thoughts on good regulations that would give adults access to what they want and need, while protecting youth.
Regulate nicotine strength and flavours. Require proper labelling. Enforce strict age restrictions. Hold retailers accountable when they sell to minors, and crack down on those importing and selling illegal products. Nothing radical, just old fashion common sense.
The RV and our increasingly ridiculous pouch collection rolls west.