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By Terence Corcoran
At a news conference in mid-election campaign last year, Prime Minister Harper held up flavoured tobacco products and promised that, if relected, the Conservatives would crack down on tobacco that tasted like mints, bubble gum and banana splits.
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The result was Bill C-32, officially titled The Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act — a misnomer if ever there was one. Today, a year later, what Mr. Harper's Conservatives have delivered instead is an over-the-top law that threatens a global trade war and another bonanza for Canada's already out-of-control contraband cigarette market.
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The more immediate impact of the law, however, is a ban on the sale in Canada of virtually all brands of U.S. cigarettes. Guess where that leads? The logical result of a ban on legal imports of Marlboros and Winstons is new demand for illegal supplies through the burgeoning Native-dominated contraband market, a tax-evading multi-billion-dollar industry that already accounts for between 33% to 50% of the Canadian cigarette market.
While this may look like another case of unintended consequences run amok, it more likely is part of deliberate scheming by Health Canada officials and others who are consciously using fruit-flavoured smokes to create a global tobacco trade bomb against the U.S. and tobacco industries in Europe, South America and Asia.
There is certainly evidence that Health Canada officials misled Parliament on the trade implications of the flavoured tobacco ban.
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Were the Tories snookered by Health Canada officials? It looks like it. It also looks like the Prime Minister's original campaign gambit, to protect children from flavoured tobacco, was a ruse. Whether Mr. Harper knew that he was getting into is another matter. The zeal with which his staff pushed the issue suggests they were eager to score political points but less keen on understanding what Health Canada was up to.
The final version of Bill C-32, which became law last month, does much more than ban bubble-gum flavours in tobacco. It bans the use of 5,000 ingredients in making tobacco. Most of the ingredients, however, are not used to turn tobacco into Froot Loops. Many are used, however, to subtly alter the harsher tobaccos used in the making of the kinds of cigarettes smoked all over the world, especially U.S. brands such as Marlboro and European brands such as Gauloise.
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Internationally, then, the Harper Tories have created a potential trade war. At home, meanwhile, the ban on the import of cigarettes that contain some of the 5,000 ingredients — including Marboros and Camels — will fuel new contraband demand. Warnings to that effect were issued during the Senate committee hearing. "I can guarantee you that we will lose even more money to the illegal cigarette trade," said Kenneth Kim, general manager of the Ontario Korean Businessmen's Association.
Still, Bill C-32 became law, even though Senator Segal abstained over the trade issue. As a result, Mr. Harper's opportunistic election gimmick, aimed at curbing the use of flavoured tobacco to children, will do nothing to protect children. By further enhancing the power and scope of the contraband market, it will only increase the supply of illegal cigarettes, a prime source of tobacco to the young. At the same time, the government has launched a protectionist scheme that threatens a trade conflict.
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
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