Updated: December 4, 2017

As we have seen by the introduction of Bill S-5, an Act to amend the Tobacco Act and the Non-smokers’ Health Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts which will soon be the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (TVPA) upon Royal Assent, the Government will begin to regulate vaping products under the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act (CCPSA).

As ECTA had determined in previous years, Health Canada’s recent Notice to Industry has stated that Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations (CCCR), 2001 will be applied to e-liquid, allowing for up to 66 mg/mL to be sold under the CCPSA. Enforcement will begin upon Royal Assent of Bill S-5.

Obviously, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act (CPLA) and Consumer Packaging and Labelling Regulations (CPLR) also apply to e-liquid labeling.

This WILL become law and it is the responsibility of the manufacturer (or retailer/distributor/wholesaler that imports e-liquid for sale) to ensure that their products are compliant, or you will (literally) pay the consequences. From the TVPA (Bill-S5):

These regulations are not a joke or anything to be taken lightly. Do not expect any enforcement agencies to hold your hand or cut any slack while you gradually come into compliance. Being “close” on these regulations is still a failure and enforcement agencies may issue citations and/or seize product on the spot.

The CCPSA, CPLA/R and CCCR, 2001 are not easy regulations for light reading. There is no simple list of “Must Have’s” or “Must Be’s” on a label because it really depends on the size and shape of the container. The CCPSA and CCCR, 2001 recognizes that manufacturers use many different types of containers and therefore adjusts the requirements based on that container.

With federal regulation looming and the large number of requests for assistance that we have been receiving, we must reserve assistance with CCPSA / CPLA / CPLR / CCCR, 2001 and label compliance services for our  membership.

If you need assistance with CCPSA, CPLA/R and CCCR, 2001 compliance with your products, we encourage you to Join ECTA

If you do not wish to join ECTA, we STRONGLY encourage you to hire a CCPSA, CPLA/R and CCCR, 2001 professional consulting firm for compliance assistance.

The ECTA supports this competitiveness and creativity, however there are limits on what can and cannot be done to the product that would limit our support.  Obviously, weights and measurements are the variable.

What’s in the e-liquid?

That is one of the more common arguments that opponents to our industry use to discredit or impose scrutiny on our industry.  For that reason, the ECTA has produced a list of what is expected to be in the e-liquid as well as items that should not be used.  Our general philosophy for manufacturers is that if something does not need to be in the e-liquid, it should not be used in the e-liquids.

What can be used in e-liquid?

These are the compounds that should be used to manufacture e-liquid. These were selected because they have a very long history of studies or generally safe use for inhalation or oral ingestion:

• Propylene Glycol (USP grade)
• Vegetable Glycerin (USP grade)
• Glycerol (USP grade)
• Alcohol  (< 2%, Human consumable and pure as possible)
• Water (Distilled or Deionized)
• Flavourings (Food grade)
• Nicotine (< 3.6%, USP grade)

There has been some evidence that PDO (1,3-Propanediol) “may” be a viable substitute for Propylene Glycol but there has not been enough research for us to be able to recommend it as an ingredient for use in e-liquid.

Similarly, sweeteners such as Sucralose is not on the list above. Although there appears to be no strong evidence to indicate that it should not be used, there is significant skepticism within the scientific community. For that reason, if it is used, use as little as possible and it should be included on the Ingredients list.

What should not be used as an additive in e-liquid?

There are a number of different compounds and chemicals that should not be used as an additive in e-liquid for various reasons.

• Diacetyl (2,3-Butanedione)
• Acetyl Propionyl (2,3-Pentanedione)
• Illegal or controlled substances
• Analogs, isomers, salts and derivitives of any scheduled/controlled substance
• Vitamins or Dietary supplements
• Prescription or therapeutic medicines
• Caffeine or other oral stimulant
• Artificial Food Coloring

As the industry evolves and more information comes available, these lists may be changed.

Malfunctions in most regulated commercial electronic cigarette / personal vaporizing devices result in that device shutting down temporarily or permanently. Mechanical and Hybrid vaporizers (advanced devices preferred by some), require greater safety and care as they generally do not contain internal safety regulators.

The lack of federal regulation and a growing concern for consumer safety requires that ECTA take action now. While it is not within our mandate to solve every issue that the government has yet to regulate, we strongly believe the safety of consumers is not something that can wait.

In line with the above, we have released a policy that all members are expected follow. The following product classes should be accompanied with the corresponding warning (see below) as either a label/sticker or printed handout:

The policy has been implemented as follows:

To help facilitate nationwide safety, in addition to ECTA members, we are providing these materials to the entire industry, irrespective of ECTA affiliation. You may download and distribute this release from here: en | fr (being translated)

Links for just the attachments are below.

Many of the reported incidents can be attributed to improper use of or handling of the devices. Anyone considering the purchase or use of a Mechanical and Hybrid device should become educated on the aspects and inherent risks of those devices. A few resources can be found here:

Please Contact Us if you have any questions about ECTA’s Member Policy

It was only a few years ago that many of the e-liquid out there were made in someone’s basement, kitchen, or spare bedroom. Even today, there are those that continue to make juice at home and sell it to those around them, even vape shops. But what’s the problem?

Why Testing is Important

Regardless of how or where ejuice is made, there are certain standards that should be achieved and maintained. How would you feel if you walked into a restaurant and discovered that the kitchen practices were no better than what the majority of people did at home?

Making juice for yourself or for a friend at home is much different than making it for sale to the consumer. This is why there are health inspectors to ensure that certain standards are maintained. While you may feel the risk of liability is low, there is still the possibility that someone may come back with issues of one kind or another.

The juice maker is really the only person who knows what goes into their particular flavors. In the earlier days of juice making, it was more common to add water or alcohol to either dilute it or to get a better ‘throat hit’ without using nicotine. One of the primary reasons why testing is important is to ensure that no extraneous ingredients are added. In short, it provides the consumer with a level of trust and assurance that what’s being produced is produced properly.

What’s Being Tested?

Nicotine Concentration – If the bottle says 3mg, then the juice should be 3mg. Yes, mistakes can be made, and therefore, it’s good to know that there is consistency in the production process.

Other elements that are being tested for include Acetaldehyde, Acetoin, Diacetyl, Formaldehyde, Acetyl Propionyl, pH Level, and percentage of water content.

The MDL (Method Detection Level) is one of the most critically important aspects of E-Liquid Testing. By way of example: Diacetyl (2,3-Butanedione) and Acetyl Propionyl (2,3-Pentanedione) are common compounds in flavoring that contain certain ketones linked, though not conclusively, to a serious disease “Bronchial Obliterans”, commonly called “Popcorn Lung”. As a minor constituent in flavoring, often undeclared by flavorants manufacturers, it is generally found in very small amounts. Therefore, the most sensitive detection limit is required to either find or rule-out Diacetyl in any commercially marketed eliquid.

We position Electronic Cigarettes as a Tobacco Harm Reduction tool, so our goal should be to eliminate as many harmful aspects as possible. Tobacco Cigarettes contain Diacetyl in concentrations of 250+ ppm. Therefore, whatever testing protocol is used should be expected to test to well below that level.

Test Results

Results are returned to the member, with a copy forwarded to a qualified, independent third party for audit and historical purposes. The third party auditor reviews the results, deems pass or fail for each sample and follows-up on actions taken for any issues that may have been identified in the results.

The Test Result Reports are anywhere from 20-40 pages in length and are extremely complex and detailed. Reading and understanding the results does require training and qualifications in this area. ECTA’s Board has engaged in long and detailed conversations with Enthalpy about the results, and we appreciate the skill required to understand and read tests correctly, but do not position ourselves as qualified to do so.

Tests are paid for by the member, the results are the property of that member and they may disclose those results, in whole or part, to the public, at their own discretion. While this policy may change at some point in the future, that is the policy as of now.

While you may be confident in how your juice is made, as a Juice Manufacturer you will gain better confidence from perspective vape shops when you’re able to show them your test results. While stores are able to increase their credibility to their customers when they provide juice and flavors that they can confidently stand behind as being produced with quality assurance.

Build the trust of customers and consumers alike.

ECTA Standards

ECTA recognizes the need for standards and appropriate testing for E-Liquid. We continually investigate different processes for testing to ensure our protocols identify potential risks and issues with E-Liquid ingredients. Our process is continuously revisited, improved and adjusted as needed or dictated by the science and challenges within the industry. Below are the standards we apply to our members. We also encourage any E-Liquid manufacturer, reseller or even private DIY’er to follow the same.

The tolerances allowed the compounds that we have tested for our members are as follows:

* MDL – Method Detection Limit or Level of Detection (LOD).

The ECTA goal for members is a non-detection for elements where upper limits have been set. However, there are a couple of threshold levels for both Acetyl Propionyl and Diacetyl into which a result may fall.

• Non-Detection of Pentanedione and Diacetyl – This is the ECTA standard to which all members must strive to achieve
• < 22 µg/ml for Diacetyl and < 45 µg/ml for Acetyl Propionyl no disclosure – This is a “caution” threshold, though while recommended, is not required for disclosure. Members are required to work towards removing the cause of the compound. Levels in this range are most often attributed to cross-contamination.
• < 100 µg/ml disclosure – This “caution” threshold requires disclosure to consumers if the eliquid remains on the market, and a plan to replace the flavorant with an alternative. Disclosure is required on a website (if applicable), in a Retail Location (if applicable), and optionally on the label of the product (pending stock level depletion)
• > 100 µg/ml (ppm) indicates a “FAIL” – This is above the upper limit and beyond ECTA standards. If an E-Liquid result shows higher than this level the member must immediately stop sale of that product and either discontinue or return the product to their shelves only after the E-Liquid is reformulated and re-tested to show that it has been corrected.

When member test results fall into one of the caution thresholds, they are given a provisional “pass” with prescribed action required to identify the origin and remove or correct the problem.

ECTA recognizes that flavorant manufacturing companies are not connected to, nor specifically formulating for the E-Liquid industry. The occurrence of Diacetyl and other compounds are viewed differently by this industry for use in foods and beverages. Due to the manufacturing practises of the flavorant industry, it may require additional time to identify potentially harmful compounds, find alternatives and suitable flavorings for inhalation. Testing is a critical component to ensuring we support a process of increasing safety and timely responses to current and future issues. That is the backbone of “harm reduction”.

If you have any questions regarding E-Liquid testing, please do not hesitate to Contact Us

To be clear, electronic cigarettes are adult products. They provide no benefit to youth or children. Our society, as a whole, reserves many services and products to adults, not because of inherent danger, rather because use and access requires a level of maturity. Electronic cigarettes are substitutes for tobacco (an adult product), and therefore an “adult” product by their very nature.

The industry, as a whole, has long desired regulation restricting electronic cigarettes to adults. This is a standard for all ECTA members and is carried through internationally by dedicated electronic cigarette stores. Across Canada dedicated retailers voluntarily refuse to sell to minors. Unfortunately, in the absence of legislation or regulation requiring this, there are some general retailers (ie: convenience stores) unaware of the adult nature of the product, who have sold to minors. Simple regulation requiring this would go far in clarifying the issue for the consumer and for the retailer.

Electronic cigarette eliquid (the consumable and flavored portion) is not tobacco, nor organic in nature.  As such, eliquid has no inherent or base flavor, as would be the case with tobacco. Flavors are achieved using common food flavorings, none of which are able to replicate the bitter taste of burning tar, plant matter and chemicals. It would be ludicrous to suggest that the industry attempt to create and utilize only those food flavorants that can be combined to taste “like” burning tobacco. It would also be counter-productive in appealing to adult smokers as an alternative product.

The cornerstone of this products’ success among adult smokers, is the wide variety of flavorings – which do permit consumers to personalize their “vape” to their own tastes – and change according to their own personal desire.

Similar to other adult products, such as alcohol, eliquid flavorings are part of the products’ appeal to its consumers (adult smokers) rather than an attempt to target a user group the product is not intended for, marketed or sold to (youth or children).

The term “smoking cessation” has become associated with programs designed, in a therapeutic manner, to end an individual’s relationship with and reliance on tobacco products. They generally have a prescribed start and specified end to achieve treatment.

Electronic cigarettes are a “harm reduction substitute for tobacco” that smokers choose, independently on an ongoing basis. Consumers do, indeed, often and many, achieve complete (or near complete) abstinence from tobacco using these devices. This is not due to a specific therapeutic effect. It’s simply that electronic cigarettes are more pleasant and less dangerous – enabling a consumer to achieve the same behaviour without the same harm.

FACT – Smoking Tobacco Cigarettes WILL harm you and potentially the people around you.

We are a society engaged in consistent harm reduction policies. From food science to laptop monitors to seatbelts and child car seats, we are constantly identifying potential harmful elements and looking for ways to remove or reduce that harm. Tobacco cigarettes are not able to be part of this process as they are inherently dangerous.

Electronic cigarettes enable harm reduction on two levels: immediate and long term. Smokers can choose to achieve immediate removal of tobacco products and, the industry is able to engage in long term harm reduction in manufacturing. Unlike tobacco, electronic cigarette “eliquid” (the consumable portion) is not a fixed organic crop, but a “recipe” of commonly used food additives. If one ingredient is determined to be more harmful, it can be replaced with another. Ongoing scientific research can assist in identifying potential harms – as with other common consumables.

Electronic Cigarettes have been in the mainstream marketplace now for more than 10 years.  Total Illnesses or Deaths from Electronic Cigarettes:  0. Total Illnesses or Deaths from Tobacco for that same time period (According to the CDC): 5 million deaths per year. Current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8 million deaths annually by 2030.

Given the above fact and the number of studies that have proven that Electronic Cigarettes are at least “significantly” safer than tobacco cigarettes; doesn’t it make sense to allow smokers that cannot or will not quit smoking to have reasonable access to a known safer alternative?

Electronic cigarettes are, in fact, designed to de-normalize the act of smoking combustible tobacco. The experiential difference for both users and by-standers is substantial.

Smoking cigarettes involves inhaling tar and smoke, leaving an acrid, lingering odour and smoke by-products in the surrounding air. Electronic cigarettes do neither. The user experiences a pleasant flavour and inhalable vapor, while by-standers experience a lingering odour common to heated food flavourings that dissipate quickly. The person using an electronic cigarette no longer needs to be concerned over lingering smoke odours on hands, body, breath and clothes – nor tobacco-specific stains on skin and teeth.

Those who switch completely to Electronic Cigarettes are often on the same page as policy makers, organizations and anti-smoking groups – and are against the use of tobacco, as they KNOW first-hand the negative effects of smoking tobacco on their own health, their social life and the home atmosphere.

Electronic cigarettes do, in fact, de-normalize tobacco use further by presenting an alternative that is far more flexible and far less dangerous and less noticeable to the individual and to bystanders than tobacco smoke.

With a complete absence of any data showing re-normalization in over 10 years of market availability, and a parallel drop in tobacco sales worldwide, electronic cigarettes are currently displaying a significant trend towards reducing tobacco use world-wide, not re-normalizing public smoking.

ECTA, members of the industry, scientific and medical researchers, and consumer interest groups, worldwide, are calling for regulations in line with similar consumer products.

1. Medical
Electronic Cigarettes are not medicines, as they do not treat anything and have no therapeutic value. In Canada, they are clearly exempt from the “Prescription Drug List” of the Food and Drug act, which exempts nicotine delivered by inhalation device in 4mg or less per dosage (usage) unit. Electronic cigarettes deliver between 0 and 0.24 mg of Nicotine per puff and users “self-titrate” nicotine in the same manner as with cigarettes (based on depth and length of puff).

Health Canada’s request to obtain Market Authorization as a “new medicine” is simply not possible, as medical authorization requires that the product have “efficacy” in treatment and a measurable “dose” that can be prescribed. Electronic cigarettes are used at the discretion of a consumer and marketed as a reduced harm substitute for tobacco, not as a therapy or treatment.

As is true with any consumer or recreational-use product – from milk to cell phones – it is certainly possible for both medical and scientific fields to observe how the product is used and its effects on consumers. Numerous such tests and observations have been carried out by recognized medical and scientific researchers world-wide, with the overwhelming majority agreeing that electronic cigarettes are a positive “harm reduction” product that should be embraced as a way to reduce tobacco use – but not a medical product.

2. Tobacco
Electronic Cigarettes are not a tobacco product. They do not contain, nor utilize tobacco and those who use the product do so in order to avoid tobacco and its harmful effects.

Nicotine used in eliquid (the consumable portion) does not transform the product into a tobacco. It is a chemical derivative of organic matter with multiple uses across several industries. The tobacco plant is the most widely utilized for the extraction process. Other plants with organic nicotine are common food sources (vegetables) – thus precious commodities.

The electronic cigarette industry has no control over the organic matter used in creating nicotine as a chemical extract, nor is it engaged in the process. We use the same ingredient from the same source as all other industries – whose products are not classified “tobacco”.

Tobacco regulations in Canada are based on the World Health Organization’s “Framework Convention on Tobacco Control” (FCTC) with the intention of reducing and removing tobacco products and their use entirely. Electronic cigarettes simply do not belong in this category – and meet no criteria exclusive to the Tobacco Act.

3. Common Consumer Products
Manufacturing of all parts of an electronic cigarette and eliquid are already guided by standards applied to common consumer products. Hardware components are electronic devices. Eliquid is created from already approved additives widely used in food and every-day consumables.

A Regulatory framework for eliquid, by national policy makers, with standards we can all attain, understand and follow is beneficial to manufacturers, retailers and consumers.

ECTA has developed (and continues to develop) standards guiding manufacturing and retail sales based on existing regulations for similar products. Our organization looks forward to the day we can sit with policy makers and discuss this in greater detail.