‘They don’t know how we live’

Cigarettes are everywhere. Gas stations, corner stores, even vending machines when I was a kid. You can drive through half the outports in Newfoundland and never worry about finding a pack.
Nicotine pouches are nowhere except pharmacy counters, if they happen to stock the right kind, if you make it there before closing, if you’re lucky enough they’re not sold out. That’s a lot of “ifs” for the one product that finally helped me quit.
Cigarettes are easy. They’re available on my way to the work site before dawn, after a 12-hour shift, when the cravings creep in, easy. No hours, no shortage, no judgment.
Pouches are hard. Line up at the pharmacy, hope the shelves aren’t empty, plan your day around store hours that don’t match real working lives. Out here, that means long drives or going without. And going without usually ends the same way: back to smoking.
I know what my father would say. He smoked until the day he died. He’d laugh at the thought that Ottawa made the harder, deadlier option the easy one. He’d tell me what he always told me: “They don’t know how we live.”
So, here’s the question I keep asking: if the goal is fewer smokers, why is the healthier option the harder one? Why is the lifeline hidden while the old habit shines in neon at every gas station?
Federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel needs to reverse the Ministerial Order and put pouches back where people actually shop. Scan IDs. Enforce the rules. But stop pretending this policy protects anyone when all it really does is push people back to cigarettes.
Cigarettes are everywhere. Pouches are nowhere. And as long as that’s true, quitting will always be harder than it should be.
Josh Hutchings,
Corner Brook