Why do we hate nicotine?

There’s something off about the way we talk about nicotine in 2026. Not smoking. Nicotine. When someone stops smoking and still uses a lower-risk product, whether that’s vaping, patches, or nicotine pouches, no one wants to give them credit for quiting smoking! You are judged. We’ve created a culture where reducing harm isn’t enough, you’re expected to achieve purity. And if you don’t, you’re treated like the problem.

I remember being at an event where someone was smoking, and another person suggested they try switching to vaping. They snapped back, “I’m a health professional, an that’s worse than smoking.” I started to respond, but he cut me off: “Don’t even try to debate me.” I looked at him and said, “You’re still wrong, and invoking authority doesn’t make you right.” Later, I found out he worked in the health professions, as a distributor of incontinence products.

That mindset shows up not just in casual conversations, but in policy. Across Canada, we’re seeing regulations that aren’t framed as bans, but operate like them in practice. Products are pushed behind pharmacy counters while cigarettes remain on open shelves. Flavours are stripped down to a narrow, unappealing set that doesn’t match what adults actually use to switch. Nicotine limits are set without regard for cessation needs. Tax rates on the safer products that are so high, they make cigarettes are affordable. Marketing and communication regulationts block even basic, factual comparisons about relative risk. None of this is called a ban, but it is.

When access becomes inconvenient, inconsistent, or confusing, people don’t just neatly comply with policy goals. They adapt. Some give up on switching altogether and stick with cigarettes. the most harmful option still widely available. Others turn to the illicit market, where products are unregulated, higher in nicotine, and often more accessible than legal alternatives. The say they want to “protect,” the children, but how can they regulate a black market?

NGO’s are the biggest problem. They have a hard line. They only know one word, and that word is BAN and they don’t give a crap about the consequences. They don’t look at the hard facts. They just want things to happen their way or else. And if we look at the past, their or else, has been bullying and lying.

And that’s why we have a growing black market in this country. Because politicians, are afraid of bullies.

The consequences of their bad lobbying for their policy ways is unfolding right across Canada. When safer products are harder to find, less appealing, or stripped of useful information, fewer people switch. When the legal market becomes restrictive, the illegal market fills the gap. And when cigarettes remain the easiest product to buy, the entire system sends a contradictory message about risk.

If the goal is to reduce smoking related disease, then policy should align with how people actually quit. That means making lower risk alternatives accessible, understandable, and appropriately regulated, not quietly constrained to the point of irrelevance. It means being honest about relative risk, even if the message is more complex. And it means recognizing that progress doesn’t always look like abstinence.

Because in the end, this isn’t about defending nicotine. It’s about reducing harm. And right now, too many of our policies, and too much of our rhetoric, are getting in the way of that goal.