A Lloydminster teen hopes St. Albert students will join her campaign to get flavoured tobacco banned in Alberta.
Jianna Marin dropped by St. Albert's Bellerose Composite High last Friday to talk about her province-wide campaign against flavoured tobacco.
The 18-year-old is a student at Lloydminster Comprehensive High and winner of the 2013 Barb Tarbox award. Working with the Campaign for a Smoke-Free Alberta (a coalition that includes the Canadian Cancer Society) she pushed the Alberta legislature to pass Bill 206 – a ban on flavoured tobacco – last year.
The bill is now awaiting proclamation, and Marin urged the 80-some students at Bellerose who heard her speak to press the province to implement it as soon as possible.
"The marketing of flavoured tobacco is a deliberate fraud that is intended to entice young smokers," she said.
By adding mint, cherry, peach and other flavours commonly used in candy to tobacco, tobacco companies make their products more attractive to youth.
"This shameful practice cannot continue," Marin said. "Kids need protection and they need it now."
Deadly flavours
Marin said that she started her campaign after she noticed a large number of students at her school using flavoured chewing tobacco.
"After a midget hockey game, my mother collected over a dozen tins of empty flavoured spit tobacco just for one team," she said. The two of them decided to take action.
Marin said her family has a history of cancer.
"It just kills me to see other people putting themselves at a greater risk of something my family has been cursed with."
Marin spearheaded the Lloydminster Flavour Gone group to lobby for a ban on flavoured tobacco products in Alberta. The student-led group mustered 5,000 signatures through a postcard campaign and got local MLA Richard Starke to put a ban before the legislature as a private member's bill.
Christine Cusanelli (MLA Calgary-Currie) carried the bill to third reading once Starke became minister of tourism (as ministers cannot put forward private member's bills).
About 44,000 Albertans in Grades 6 to 12 use tobacco products, said Angeline Webb, policy advisor with the Canadian Cancer Society. Of those, about 26,000 use flavoured tobacco.
"A vast majority of tobacco users start before the age of 18," Webb said, which is why tobacco companies market flavoured cigarettes. Candy-like flavourings such as cherry or mint make tobacco more palatable for youths, making them more likely to use it or regular tobacco.
This is particularly true for menthol cigarettes, Marin said. About half of Alberta's youth smokers (about 13,000 people) use mentholated cigarettes, compared to just five per cent of adult ones.
"Menthol is the most harmful flavouring of all," she continued, as it opens airways, soothes the throat and enhances nicotine absorption, making it easier for kids to start smoking.
Marin said she's concerned that industry lobbyists will push for an exemption for menthol cigarettes in the regulations for Bill 206.
"A menthol exemption will leave behind 13,000 youth smokers and will condemn thousands more to addiction, disease and premature death."
About 30 per cent of cancer deaths are caused by tobacco use, Webb said.
"This is death that is entirely preventable."
The province is now working on regulations for Bill 206 with a view to have it in force this fall, Cusanelli said.
Alberta will be the first province not to exempt mentholated tobacco if it does a complete ban, she noted – a ban she personally supports.
"Our responsibility, our fiduciary duty is to ensure we protect our youth."
Marin called on the province to carry out a complete ban on flavoured tobacco.
"We hope that our government will give kids the first-class protection they deserve from these deadly products."
