The provincial government is not going to consider increasing the legal age to purchase vaping products.

Most provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador, ban the sale of vaping and tobacco products to anyone under 19 years of age but some provinces, including PEI, have gone a step further and changed the legal age to 21.

The Alliance for the Control of Tobacco says the number of young people who are vaping is alarming. Health officials are also concerned.

Health Minister John Haggie will not allow cannabis vape products on the legal market because of concerns about the connection to serious lung illness in other parts of the country and the U-S. However, he says increasing the legal age could open the door for a Charter challenge.

Haggie says the evidence is out there that vaping cannabis up to the age of 25, as well as drinking alcohol, can have damaging effects. Justice officials tell him that you don’t want to draft a law that is constitutionally weak.