Last week the Canadian Cancer Society, Heart & Stroke Foundation and Canadian Lung Association handed Saskatchewan a D- in their Report Card on the battle against smoking.

The two main sticking points that dragged down the mark were the availability of flavoured tobacco and lack of regulations affecting e-cigarettes.  The groups say those two issues have Saskatchewan's youth smoking rates double that of the rest of Canada. 

Given the potential health risks associated with tobacco, the Five Hills Health Region has weighed in on the matter. 

"The issue that concerns me the most is the normalization (of tobacco use)," said Medical Health Officer Dr. Shauna Hudson, who says that the availabilty of those products can be seen as encouraging tobacco use. "If we're not going to be treating (e-cigarettes and flavoured tobacco) like (regular) cigarettes, then we're not de-normalizing it. A lot of the evidence-based work that's been done about trying to prevent smoking in teens, is about de-normalizing tobacco use."

Hudson says it's important for youth to be aware of the health risks associated with tobacco use among young people. "There's going to be asthma, ear infections...that's what environmental tobacco smoke causes."

E-cigarettes don't burn tobacco, but typically are flavoured and contain nicotine, and Hudson says there is no data available yet to measure their long-term effects. However, she adds that it took several years for the health effects of traditional cigarettes to be known as well. 

"Heart disease, lung disease, cancer...they all take a long time (to determine). So we're not going to know all of the answers (for a while). But the health effects that people are more likely to experience would be amongst young children, who have a breathing apparatus that's not as mature."