In the last eight months, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health has confiscated nearly $45,000 in illegal vape products from local retailers.
In one instance, a substantial amount of illegal vape products were discovered behind a false wall during a food inspection. Another involved a convenient store hiding illegal products in makeshift container made of binders.
“That’s probably the most creative thing I’ve seen,” said Phil Wong in a presentation to the WDG Board of Health on Wednesday. Wong is the environmental health manager with public health, and is responsible for the tobacco and vaping enforcement unit.
“It really shows you the extent some of these operators will go to to continue to sell these illegal products,” he said.
Under the Smoke Free Ontario Act, fines range from $125 to $400 for selling vape products containing more than the legal limit of nicotine for Canada, products purchased overseas not approved by Health Canada, or flavoured products sold in non-specialty vape stores.
The maximum amount of nicotine concentration allowed in vape products is 20 mg/ml – anything over that is illegal. Wong said they’ve been finding items with 50 mg/ml or more of nicotine.
They’ve also come across products local stores have purchased from other countries that have unknown amounts of nicotine, and one ticketed retailer was actually mixing and creating their own liquid.
Wong said they’ve issued more tickets this year than they have in the last five or six years combined. That’s in part due to limited enforcement during the pandemic, though he said there is a clear trend of non-compliance in the area.
Over 90 notices of violations and tickets under the act since it came into place in 2017, although no tickets were issued in 2018, 2019, 2021 or 2022, largely due to the pandemic. Just one ticket was issued in 2020.
That means the majority of violations took place this year.
Many were due to flavoured vape products being sold in places like gas stations or convenient stores. The majority of infractions this year, though, were for selling to minors.
Public Health conducts test shopping once a year for the 201 vape retailers in the region.
Students aged 15 to 18 are employed by public health to purchase tobacco or vape products from retailers, after which enforcement officers will issue offence notices or notices of violation to retailers who sold to youth.
Of the 110 vape audits that have taken place in the last eight months, 30 per cent of interactions ended in a sale, meaning 33 stores sold products to a minor under the age of 19.
“This is higher than we’ve ever seen,” Wong said.
Repeated sales of tobacco products to youth during testing can result in automatic prohibition of tobacco products.
“This is actually really serious,” said medical officer of health Dr. Nicola Mercer during the meeting. “Once your child is addicted, we actually have no medical way to get them off.”
While there is a program for cigarettes, there isn’t one for vape products, which can contain a much higher nicotine content.
“Unlike conventional cigarettes where you kind of know when to stop when your cigarette runs out, (with a vape) you just don’t know when to stop, so the exposure to nicotine is absolutely higher,” Wong said.
Common ingredients include propylene glycol, ethylene glycol, glycerol, flavouring, nicotine and other chemicals, and although the products have been approved by the federal government, the long-term impacts aren’t yet known.
Mercer said government policy is needed to better enforce and regulate the industry, but in the meantime public health has launched online complaint tools for community members to submit reports of illegal products or retailers selling to youth – one for the community and one for use on school property.
Since these tools were launched in the fall, more than 65 complaints, requests and referrals to tobacco enforcement officers have been made.
Public health is also in the process of developing learning modules for youth and conducting more targeted enforcement at retailers near schools.
