Flavored tobacco gateway to teen smoking, Windsor exptert says
The manager of the Windsor branch of the Canadian Cancer Society says the packaging of flavoured products is misleading.
"Parents would not necessarily be able to recognize it in their kid's bag," said Judey Lund. "If your kid got it for Halloween, you wouldn't know it. You would just look at it and glance and think it's just candy. So it makes it more appealing to young people."
A new survey from the University of Waterloo said half of the high school students who smoke say they've used flavoured products in the past month.
The school's Propel Centre for Population Health Impact put together the study on on behalf of Health Canada and found that 50 per cent of high school students who had used tobacco within the past 30 days used flavoured products.
That's why Lund said the high number of students trying flavoured tobacco doesn't surprise her.
"Flavoured tobacco is a gateway tobacco," she said. "It's menthol. It's easier on your throat. The flavour, it's something that hooks kids. Kids, teenagers naturally want to try stuff and experiment, and the flavoured and the menthol are ways to hook kids and get them in and then get them addicted to tobacco."
The survey, conducted from November 2012 to June 2013, found that three out of 10 students who smoked flavoured tobacco products had smoked menthol cigarettes.
The federal Tobacco Act forbids flavours, with the exception of menthol.
Ontario is in the process of introducing legislation to ban flavoured tobacco.