A year ago last week, the former federal health minister Mark Holland made a decision that continues to take its toll on our country’s hard-working retailers as well as smokers who want to quit. He did this by ordering the removal of ZONNIC – a tobacco-free nicotine pouch, that is a Health Canada approved cessation aid – from convenience store shelves and restricting its sale to pharmacies under the supervision of a pharmacist.
While this was clearly an act aimed at harming the tobacco industry (it is Imperial Tobacco Canada that distributes ZONNIC in Canada), his shot has clearly missed its mark and has resulted in significant collateral damage.
I say this as someone who has spent his 35-year career working with responsible retailers. I have built and nurtured relationships with retailers, large and small, across the country. Today, I am responsible for our partnership with 30,000 convenience and pharma retailers who employ roughly 300,000 Canadians.
Following the removal of ZONNIC from convenience stores, our company has evolved by working even closer with pharmacists across Canada. Each day they see ZONNIC’s success in helping smokers quit. But my relationship with convenience retailers also brings daily awareness of both their lost revenues and the obstacles faced by smokers who want to use ZONNIC to kick their cigarette habit.
For instance, nearly 20 percent of postal codes that once had convenient access to ZONNIC now require a trip of more than 5 km to get to a pharmacy. As a result, mom & pop owned convenience stores are losing legitimate sales to illegal products that have quickly flooded the market. Today, roughly 70 percent of nicotine pouches sold in Canada are illegal. Many come in flavours that attract youth, and offer nicotine levels up to ten times the 4 mg maximum limit set by Health Canada.
Having ZONNIC available where cigarettes are sold works. In provinces where it was sold alongside cigarettes, cigarette sales declined faster than where it was not available.
As a society we have entrusted convenience store owners with the sale of many age-gated products including tobacco, alcohol, vaping products and lottery tickets. Retailers understand their responsibility to check IDs. They have proven time and time again that they comply with age verification. They know that if they fail to comply, there are serious consequences.
If the Canadian government truly wants to reduce smoking rates, it needs to provide Canadians who smoke access to tools to help them quit.
The solutions are simple:
- Implement a minimum age requirement to purchase any cessation product.
- Allow all cessation products to be sold in locations where adults buy their cigarettes.
- In pharmacies, make all cessation products available at the front of the store where a clerk can check ID’s, freeing up the pharmacists time to provide their patients with other heath services.
- Deploy secret shoppers to ensure youth access prevention. If any store is caught selling to youth, there must be consequences.
Health policies should focus on what actually helps as many patients as possible. For smoking cessation that means on one hand, ensuring patients can seek the often crucial professional assistance by a pharmacist when needed, but it also means providing seamless age-verified access to these products where the 3.5 million Canadian Adult smokers buy their cigarettes.
My lengthy career in building relationships with retailers across Canada gives me the confidence that not only will they continue to uphold the highest levels of compliance, but if given the chance, they will help the government achieve a smokeless Canada long before the federal government’s target of 2035.
Source: Torchia Communications
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