Health minister puts nicotine pouches behind the counter, bans flavours

OTTAWA — Health Canada-approved nicotine pouches will only be available behind pharmacy counters starting next week, as part of Health Minister Mark Holland’s promised crackdown on the sale of new nicotine products to children.

Holland plans to publish a ministerial order next Wednesday that will only allow the pouches to be sold in pharmacies, and will ban all flavours other than mint or menthol.

“Nicotine pouch flavours like berry frost or tropical breeze are not going to be allowed to be sold anywhere. They’ll be recalled,” Holland said in an interview on Thursday.

The order will also put limits on the labels and advertising of all nicotine-replacement therapies, including gums and lozenges. After a grace period of six months, manufacturers will have to revise their packaging to include warnings about nicotine addiction and ensure they’re not designed to appeal to children.

Advertising the products for anything other than quitting smoking will also be banned.

“What I’m hoping to see is for these products to be used for what they’re intended to do — to help people stop smoking — and to stop dead in its tracks the explosion of these products that we’re seeing in youth,” Holland said.

The pouches are placed between the user’s lip and gums to slowly release nicotine into the body.

Imperial Tobacco’s nicotine pouch product, called Zonnic, was approved by Health Canada as an aid to quit smoking last year, but no restrictions were put on the sale of the product to minors. The company said it voluntarily put the product behind retail counters to make it harder for kids to access.

While Zonnic is marketed as a way for adults to quit or cut back on smoking, Holland said it has increasingly made its way into the hands of children.

That makes the pouches different from other quit-smoking aids, he said.

“We continue to want to see innovation in cessation, but what we don’t want is what we’re seeing with these pouches,” he said.

“These nicotine pouches were marketed on a lifestyle basis and … they’ve been addicting people who have nothing to do with cigarettes and that is a massive health concern, and is absolutely not what they were approved for.”

Imperial Tobacco accused the minister of unfairly penalizing its highly regulated product while turning a blind eye to similar, unregulated versions that can be easily ordered online.

“The only reason that he did this is because he doesn’t like the tobacco companies,” said Eric Gagnon, the vice-president of corporate and regulatory affairs at Imperial Tobacco Canada.

“The biggest losers today are going to be the adult smokers that are trying to quit. He’s just making it harder for these people to get access to nicotine-replacement therapies.”

The company will comply with the new regulations, Gagnon said, but he called them disappointing and said they will only help the illegal supply of similar products flourish.

The minister said he’s still exploring ways of preventing those products from entering the country.

“We want to make sure that folks aren’t using them at all,” Holland said.

“We want to stop this before it becomes the epidemic that we had with vaping, where we had all sorts of people who weren’t smokers become addicted to vaping, and now that’s having a devastating effect on our health system.”

The move to take the pouches out of convenience stores has already been met with strong support from the Canadian Cancer Society and Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.

“By the time Canadian children are back in the classroom, these products will no longer be displayed and sold in the convenience stores where kids stop to buy snacks or candies,” Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada’s executive director Cynthia Callard said in a statement.

Independent convenience store owners, however, are much less enthused.

Kenny Shim, owner of Busy Bee Mart in Toronto, appealed to the minister to find way to ensure youth are protected without moving the products to pharmacies.

“We know our customers by name, we know what they buy, and we talk to them about less-harmful alternatives,” Shim said in a press release on behalf of the United Korean Canadian Industry Alliance and the Ontario Korean Business Association.

“We are ideally positioned to encourage smokers to purchase a cessation product instead of cigarettes. We cannot understand why Minister Holland does not recognize this.”

Anne Kothawala, president and CEO of the Convenience Industry Council of Canada, called on the government to reverse its decision, saying it’s choosing “to ignore law-abiding retailers in favour of organized criminals who are willing to sell nicotine products to young people.”

Holland said gums, lozenges, and other existing products will continue to be sold in convenience stores.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 22, 2024.

Laura Osman, The Canadian Press