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Opinion: Canada’s nicotine policy needs a little principled pragmatism

Canada has the worst of both worlds: a legal system too rigid to function and an illicit market expanding without constraints

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In the early 1990s, Canadian governments learned the hard way that public health policy cannot ignore market realities. High cigarette taxes, however well-intentioned, fuelled a booming contraband trade that threatened to overwhelm the legal market. In 1994, Jean Chrétien’s government made a difficult but pragmatic choice to cut tobacco taxes as part of a broader anti-smuggling plan. It reflected a simple truth: when legal markets stop working for consumers, illicit ones take over.

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