The Ontario government is now making the news due to last week’s decision to ban all vaping from public spaces. The move has great impact on many business owners, such as the recently opened Windsor Vapour Lounge, as well as a company that is an E-vape producer known as Blow Vapor.
Fernando Di Carlo is the president of Blow Vapor, and he says that “Medical marijuana is a medicine to its users. To call what the device produces ‘second hand smoke’ and limit the consumption of what has become a health product is simply unfair and wrong. The product of vaping is not smoke. It is vapor. To have smoke, one must have combustion; there is no combustion vaping.”
Di Carlo is advocating for the government to change it’s position, “We call on the Ontario government to reconsider this decision. Medical marijuana patients combat HIV, cancer, and glaucoma while severe epilepsy patients require it to control seizures. Where will they go to take their medicine? These rules are throwback to the days of restrictive and unwise marijuana laws,” says Di Carlo.
He also says that putting e-cigs in the same category as cigarettes is very uniformed. “In other advanced countries, such as the U.K., the role of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation is becoming accepted and supported. Clearly vaping is considerably safer than smoking.”
Di Carlo urges private businesses to fight against these new rules. “They are unenforceable and a step backward. Why introduce a law that puts law enforcement back into chasing marijuana users? It does not make sense,” he says.
We noted one advocate who says that being able to smoke in public during emergencies is necessary for many medical patients, and this law affects those people’s ability to deal with their illness in an emergency. We will be following Ontario and any other areas that are looking to alter their laws regarding vaping.