Memo to: Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs
From: Professor Ian Irvine, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada [email protected]
Regarding: New legislation on nicotine products.
Date: July 27, 2026
Dear Minister,
Concerning your proposed limit on flavors in electronic cigarettes: May I recommend that, in the interests of both public health and a legally functioning marketplace, you avoid imposing excessive limits on flavors.
In Canada the federal Act governing vaping forbids flavors that might appeal to children, but at the same time permits a reasonable range of fruit flavors for those of legal age. This seems like a good compromise – one that respects the rights of adults while implementing barriers to youth use.
Our federal and provincial governments have been subject to considerable pressure from health and medical organizations to ban flavors. The federal government has resisted that pressure, but several provincial governments have not (nicotine and tobacco are subject to both federal and provincial law).
The result of province-level crackdowns on vaping has been twofold. In the first instance, vapers living in provinces with the strictest controls on vaping are now ordering massive amounts of vaping product from adjoining provinces where restrictions are less rigid. This pattern has enabled vapers to largely offset the intent of the provincial restrictions. Second, vapers are now buying a large fraction of their e-cigarettes from the black market. In Canada that is run by gangs who deal in a spectrum of illegal products---drugs, guns and combustible cigarettes. Such gangs have a ready-made distribution network in place for when a new profitable product arrives.
This pattern, which I detail quantitatively in a new research paper on the SSRN website (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7030781 ), replicates what we observe in several European markets. Estonia is a small open economy in which individuals can easily buy from neighboring jurisdictions, circumvent the law, and deprive the Estonia treasury of excise tax revenues.
It is critical to recognize that simply legislating new rules does not guarantee that such rules will be effective. Every set of rules provides an incentive to some group in the economy to circumvent them for profit. And having your police force pressure individuals to vape menthol rather than berry seems like a very poor use of society’s scarce security resources. Australia is a disastrous limiting case of poorly-thought-out policy.
The research literature indicates that a more restricted e-cigarette market leads individuals to generally consume more combustibles---a product that is twenty times as risky according to the Royal College of Physicians in the UK, Public Health England and the Cochrane Reviews.
May I respectfully urge you to be cautious and use as an over-riding principle the law of unintended consequences as a guide to legislation.
Thank you for reading this.

Memo to: Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs
From: Professor Ian Irvine, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada [email protected]
Regarding: New legislation on nicotine products.
Date: July 27, 2026
Dear Minister,
Concerning your proposed limit on flavors in electronic cigarettes: May I recommend that, in the interests of both public health and a legally functioning marketplace, you avoid imposing excessive limits on flavors.
In Canada the federal Act governing vaping forbids flavors that might appeal to children, but at the same time permits a reasonable range of fruit flavors for those of legal age. This seems like a good compromise – one that respects the rights of adults while implementing barriers to youth use.
Our federal and provincial governments have been subject to considerable pressure from health and medical organizations to ban flavors. The federal government has resisted that pressure, but several provincial governments have not (nicotine and tobacco are subject to both federal and provincial law).
The result of province-level crackdowns on vaping has been twofold. In the first instance, vapers living in provinces with the strictest controls on vaping are now ordering massive amounts of vaping product from adjoining provinces where restrictions are less rigid. This pattern has enabled vapers to largely offset the intent of the provincial restrictions. Second, vapers are now buying a large fraction of their e-cigarettes from the black market. In Canada that is run by gangs who deal in a spectrum of illegal products---drugs, guns and combustible cigarettes. Such gangs have a ready-made distribution network in place for when a new profitable product arrives.
This pattern, which I detail quantitatively in a new research paper on the SSRN website (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7030781 ), replicates what we observe in several European markets. Estonia is a small open economy in which individuals can easily buy from neighboring jurisdictions, circumvent the law, and deprive the Estonia treasury of excise tax revenues.
It is critical to recognize that simply legislating new rules does not guarantee that such rules will be effective. Every set of rules provides an incentive to some group in the economy to circumvent them for profit. And having your police force pressure individuals to vape menthol rather than berry seems like a very poor use of society’s scarce security resources. Australia is a disastrous limiting case of poorly-thought-out policy.
The research literature indicates that a more restricted e-cigarette market leads individuals to generally consume more combustibles---a product that is twenty times as risky according to the Royal College of Physicians in the UK, Public Health England and the Cochrane Reviews.
May I respectfully urge you to be cautious and use as an over-riding principle the law of unintended consequences as a guide to legislation.
Thank you for reading this.