Dear friends, every year on Dec. 23, we gather to celebrate that most cherished of holidays: Festivus. Festivus was invented in the mid-1960s by a New Jersey family, one of whose sons grew up to write for television. It was introduced to the rest of us in a “Seinfeld” episode of December 1997, by the show’s chief curmudgeon, Frank Costanza, father of George. It has been honoured by curmudgeons everywhere ever since.
This strange festival usually involves an unadorned aluminum pole, a Festivus family dinner, feats of strength and the ever-important “Airing of Grievances,” in which, after dinner, every member of the family explains how all the other members have disappointed them over the past year.
Ahem! If I may be so bold as to speak on behalf of Canadian consumers and direct my sentiments at our public officials, what I want to say, borrowing the immortal words of Frank Costanza, is: “We got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re going to hear about it!”
The first official due for some appropriate grievances is Health Minister Mark Holland. Shame on him for charging forward with a vape flavour ban, even though vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking and is an effective tool for helping people quit smoking in large part because of flavours. Minister Holland also gave himself unprecedented power in the last federal budget to simply override Health Canada’s approval process, and then used it to restrict nicotine pouches to just one flavour and limit their sale to pharmacies only. Nicotine pouches are also a useful tool for helping smokers quit and are 99 per cent less harmful than cigarettes. It’s unlikely Canada will ever become “smoke-free” if we limit adults’ access to reduced-risk products.
Also at the federal level, Senator Patrick Brazeau, most famous for having lost a boxing match to then-just-MP Justin Trudeau, is ramping up his war on alcohol. The senator’s own recovery from alcohol abuse are praiseworthy but his policy suggestions are scrooge-like. He wants cancer warnings on alcohol. Yes, consumers should know the risks involved in alcohol consumption, but what exactly are they? Males who consume two drinks a day increase their absolute colorectal cancer risk by 0.0028 per cent and their risk of all cancers by 0.0099 per cent — 9.9 one-hundredths of a per cent. Funnily enough, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences in the United States concludes that moderate alcohol consumption, in comparison to those who abstain, correlated with a 16 per cent lower risk of all-cause mortality. Should that be included on the bottle as well?
