Smoking and Vaping

Our role is to support and develop local programs to decrease the harmful effects of smoking, vaping and commercial tobacco use.

We do that through a variety of approaches, including:

• Quit Smoking and Tobacco counselling
• Enforcement of the Smoke Free Ontario Act (SFOA)
• Vendor training
• Supporting prevention strategies to ensure young people don’t start smoking or vaping
• Providing information about tobacco and cannabis use and vaping to the general public

Smoking, Vaping and Youth

While youth smoking rates continue to be at-all-time low, vaping devices (like e-cigarettes) are now addicting youth to nicotine instead of cigarettes.

According to the Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey 2021, youth vaping is growing rapidly. This is concerning as many young people become addicted to nicotine before realizing the negative health risks.

Resources Available

Not an Experiment

Not an Experiment is an interactive digital toolkit available to help educators, as well as parents/caregivers and youth learn more about vaping products, current laws, the impact of vaping on health and supports available for cessation.

The Not an Experiment website also features two escape room-style activities that teach youth about vaping in a fun way:

Escape Room Activity for Classroom and Community Groups

This interactive game is in a printable format which can be facilitated by teachers and has been used extensively in schools to educate students in grades 7-12 about the risks of vaping, nicotine addiction, and industry marketing tactics. It includes:

• Printable game files
• Facilitator instructions and post activity discussion guide (facilitator instructions are also available in video format)
• Answer key

Computer Game for Youth

The second is a computer game (English only) which allows youth to play online. The game ends by asking the player a series of questions that can be used to assess their level of knowledge related to the game’s key learnings.

Quit Smoking and Vaping Support for Youth

Quitting can be hard. With every quit attempt you learn something new about yourself and your smoking patterns. Every quit attempt gets you closer to quitting for good. Don’t quit quitting!

Thought About Quitting? (2022 Youth Cessation Resource)

Factsheets

Multi-unit residences 2018 
Retailers 2019
Sporting area 2018
Waterpipe 2018