"Nicotine is a
drug, and e-cigarettes containing nicotine are drug-delivery devices. Health
Canada has always treated them as such, which makes Canada's laws governing
these devices among the most restrictive in the world. Not all e-cigarettes
contain nicotine, and selling non-nicotine e-cigarettes is legal in Canada.
Some jurisdictions that currently allow e-cigarettes, such as the United
Kingdom and the European Union, are planning to regulate them as drug. (1) However, in the United States, e-cigarettes have flourished
in the virtual absence of regulatory controls."(go.galegroup.com.library.sheridanc.on.ca)
When the
e-cigarettes were first introduced, it was not regulated. When e-cigarettes
became more well known throughout Europe and America and slowly toward the rest
of the world including Canada, some parts of the world remained unregulated
while others started regulating the e-cigarettes including Canada. Canada did
not regulate e-cigarettes at first since they were not widely used or
investigated, once the fact was known that e-cigarettes contain nicotine which
is a drug, Canada started regulating the e-cigarettes where people are not able
to purchase e-cigarettes that contain nicotine. The nicotine-free electric
cigarettes are the only electric cigarettes that Canada considers legal. In
some parts of the world, electric cigarettes are not regulated since it is a
substitute to smoking and does not harm the user as much as the regular
cigarettes do.