Provincial Attacks on Vaping – Alberta and Nova Scotia

Budget 2020 has been released by the Albertan government, and its looking like there is a focus on the vaping industry. They base it on research that points toward a 10 per cent hike in the price of tobacco having an effect of decreasing youth use by approximately the same amount.

The new tax will be a whopping 20 percent, to be charged on all eliquid, DIY vaping products and even cannabis vapes. In the first year alone, the government expect to net $4 million and in the second year it expects $8 million. This difference can be explained by both the costs associated with getting the message out and educating retailers as well as the ramp up for retailers to actually follow and remit these taxes.

While this new tax will have an effect on vapers, its is definitely not the worst regulations to come out. Nova Scotia for example, is introducing a $0.50 per millilitre tax! That works out to a whopping $30 extra on a 60ml bottle, bringing the average cost to between $55 to $60 per 60ml!

Nova Scotia is a prime example of the government following the whims of the Tobacco industry. They are making vaping much more expensive than smoking as well as making the tobacco industry’s vaping devices cheaper. Juul, Vype and other pod style devices are mainly sourced from tobacco companies, and the tax on them is only around $1.50 for a pack of 3 pods!

What this will do is either push people towards higher and higher nicotine content devices or steer them back to cigarettes. This is a blatant disservice to society and the people that suffer will be Nova Scotians themselves.

Back to the Albertan regulations, the UCP government is using this as its first step, so we can expect more rules to come out. At VanGo Vapes we constantly monitor the provincial and federal governments actions and we predict that the Albertan government will enact the following measures soon as well:

• Similar laws on vaping in public places to smoking – no vaping close to public entrances, windows or intakes.
• Limits on the types and places that vape companies can market their products. Likely this will be limited to places where all ages are allowed like corner stores and gas stations.
• There is a slight chance that there will be distance requirements for vaping stores to be a certain distance away from high schools and community centres, like some jurisdiction’s laws on marijuana retailers.

Stay tuned for the next blog posts!