Ottawa accused of wanting U.S. smokes off the market
WASHINGTON — A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers has joined a U.S. tobacco industry battle with the Harper government over accusations Ottawa is seeking a global ban on American-style blended cigarettes.
The fight, which was triggered last year by Canada’s new anti-smoking legislation, has escalated amid claims Health Canada is now pursuing international restrictions on flavouring ingredients that remove the harsh taste of burley tobacco in Marlboro and other popular U.S. brands.
The conflict features tobacco industry charges of Canadian “duplicity” and claims that “rogue” bureaucrats have a hidden agenda to eliminate American-style cigarettes from the global market.
Health Canada, meantime, contends Canada’s goal is simply to bar cigarettes with flavours — such as vanilla, licorice and chocolate — added to appeal to youth.
In the past month, seven members of Congress from districts in Kentucky, Virginia and Indiana have written to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to intervene. Specifically, they fear Ottawa is using Canada’s restrictions as a model for new prohibitions being considered for the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
“We believe Canada’s approach has gone too far,” Indiana congressmen Baron Hill and Brad Ellsworth wrote in a Feb. 4 letter to Harper. “If your government pushes these provisions through the FCTC process, the result could devastate the burley farmers in our state.”
The dispute with Canada began with Parliament’s passage of the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act, which prohibits the addition of flavours designed to market cigarettes and little cigars to children and youth.
The bill bans a variety of candy and fruit-flavoured tobacco products with flavours like tropical passion, cherry or chocolate.
But U.S. lawmakers and producers of several American-style brands — including Marlboro, Camel and Winston — said the Canadian law also sideswipes cigarettes blended with burley, a harsh-tasting air-cured tobacco.
They contend “mild” flavourings added to those brands mitigate the naturally sharp taste of burley, without adding any of the flavour’s characteristics to the cigarette itself.
Canada’s legislation is “so broad that it bans traditional blended products containing burley tobacco, even though they taste like tobacco, and not like the confectionary or fruit flavours which could be marketed to young people,” Representative Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican, wrote in a separate Jan. 25 letter to Harper.
Philip Morris International, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, has been heavily involved in organizing opposition in Congress to the Canadian law.
A bigger concern for the cigarette makers, however, are draft guidelines for the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control that were circulated at a meeting in Amman, Jordan last October.
Canadian officials were among the “key facilitators” for a working group that proposed nations “prohibit or restrict the use of flavouring substances” in cigarettes.
“From the perspective of public health, there is no justification for permitting the use of ingredients, such as flavouring agents, which help make tobacco products attractive,” according to a copy of the draft guidelines.
Health Canada spokesman Philippe Laroche said Canada was one of 24 countries involved in the WHO working group. The draft guidelines “are not modeled after any one country’s particular approach” to tobacco control, he said.
But Kentucky farmer Roger Quarles, president of the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-operative Association, called Health Canada “a rogue government agency” that is being “less than forthcoming” about its actions.
“Health Canada is once again showing duplicity on the issue of banning blended cigarettes that contain burley tobacco,” said Quarles.
“The fact is Health Canada’s efforts, if successful, will wipe out an entire category of legitimate tobacco products under the guise of a candy-flavored ingredients ban.”
Quarles said the better approach is a more limited ban on ingredients with “characterizing flavours” that make cigarettes taste more like candy than tobacco. The U.S. Congress passed legislation along those lines last year.
“Canada could have followed this responsible model, but Health Canada has a larger agenda and that is to take American-style cigarettes off the market,” Quarles said.
In a response to questions about the Canadian legislation first posed last October, Health Canada said U.S. manufacturers “may be required to reformulate” their cigarettes to continue selling them in Canada.
Some of the ingredients known to be used in American-style blended cigarettes include vanilla, honey, chocolate, coconut and maple, Laroche said.
The addition of those flavours make the cigarettes “more appealing to youth and this is exactly the kind of tobacco industry marketing tactic that we want to prevent in order to protect our vulnerable youth,” he said.
While American-style cigarettes represent less than one per cent of the market in Canada — where milder flue-cured tobacco is favoured among smokers — but they are dominant in other places around the globe.
About 80 per cent of the U.S. burley crop is exported.
By Sheldon Alberts, Canwest News Service
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