Herbal and Nicotine-Free Shisha Under Canadian Law

The federal Tobacco and Vaping Products Act regulates products made of tobacco, and it does not mention herbal shisha at all. Ontario says outright that using a waterpipe to smoke herbal shisha is not prohibited under the Smoke-Free Ontario Act, 2017. Whether a province treats herbal and nicotine-free blends the same as tobacco shisha depends on how its Act defines smoking, and some of them say nothing about it.

Federal wording

Section 2 of the Act defines a tobacco product as a product made in whole or in part of tobacco, including tobacco leaves. The words hookah, shisha and herbal do not appear anywhere in the text. “Water pipe” shows up in two places only: the definition of accessory, which also means a water pipe, and the tobacco product definition, which counts devices other than a water pipe. A shisha blend with no tobacco in it does not match “made in whole or in part of tobacco”, which is our reading; we found no Health Canada statement that confirms it.

Section 8 says no person shall furnish a tobacco product or vaping product to a young person, meaning someone under 18, in a public place or a place the public can enter. A seller has a defence if they asked for and were shown prescribed age documentation and reasonably believed it. On the same reading, a tobacco-free blend falls outside that section, and we did not find a federal minimum age for it. Tobacco shisha is covered, and our cigar, pipe and hookah tobacco page explains the warnings, packaging and duty that follow.

Flavoured waterpipe tobacco

Menthol and cloves are prohibited in all tobacco products under Schedule 1. The broader flavouring list in item 1 applies, apart from export products, to cigarettes, cigars with a non-spiral wrapper or tipping paper, little cigars and blunt wraps. Waterpipe tobacco is not named in that item. We checked the Act’s text and Schedule 1 and did not read the regulations, so we cannot say whether anything else limits fruit flavours in waterpipe tobacco federally. The menthol and flavoured tobacco guide covers the wider history.

Provinces can go further. The Ontario fact sheet lists selling, offering to sell or distributing flavoured tobacco products, including flavoured waterpipe tobacco, among the Act’s prohibitions. Alberta’s Act bans selling a flavoured tobacco product, defined by a characterizing flavour, a representation as flavoured or a designation in the regulations. We did not read Alberta’s regulations, so we do not know how that applies to shisha.

How four provinces define the thing being smoked

Province	Wording we read	Effect on a tobacco-free blend
Ontario	Fact sheet: herbal shisha use in a waterpipe is not prohibited	Not prohibited by the Act, per the fact sheet
Alberta	“Smoke” means to smoke, hold or control a heated or lit tobacco product	Tobacco is the trigger in the definition; the Act never mentions herbal products
British Columbia	“Tobacco” means leaves or products produced from tobacco in any form or for any use	The smoking prohibition is worded around tobacco
Manitoba	“Smoking” means smoking a cigarette, cigar, pipe or other device used for smoking tobacco or cannabis	A tobacco-free blend is not named; we found no herbal wording

Where a rule is tied to tobacco, a blend that contains none may fall outside it. This is an inference from the definitions. We did not find any statement from Alberta, British Columbia or Manitoba on herbal shisha, and cities can add bylaws that change the answer. See the provincial lounge comparison for the places each Act covers.

What public health sources say

Public Health Ontario’s September 2021 evidence brief states that waterpipe smoke from both tobacco-based products and non-tobacco herbal products contains harmful toxins and chemicals. It found similar levels of toxins in tobacco-based and tobacco-free smoke, with the exception of nicotine, and linked the short-term rise in heart rate to nicotine. The brief adds that the Ontario distinction between tobacco and non-tobacco products makes it difficult for inspectors to enforce the Act and sends confusing messages to users. The full findings are on the hookah health risks page.

Sharing a mouthpiece in public

We found no provision about sharing mouthpieces or hoses in the federal Act or in the Alberta, British Columbia and Manitoba texts we searched. The word mouthpiece appears in the federal Act only in the weight rules for cigars and little cigars. Public Health Ontario says the effectiveness of disposable mouthpieces is undetermined, and that contamination of the hose or water bowl may still allow transmission.

What we could not confirm

• The text of the Ontario Act and its regulations. The Ontario fact sheet is our only Ontario source for the herbal and flavoured waterpipe points.
• Whether Ontario has changed its treatment of herbal shisha since Public Health Ontario wrote its brief in September 2021.
• Provincial minimum ages for tobacco-free shisha and whether any province applies an age limit to it.
• How steam stones, heated non-combustion shisha and electronic waterpipe heads are classified. The federal vaping product definition covers a substance used in an aerosol-producing device whether or not it contains nicotine, and nothing we read applies it or the tobacco product definition to these products.
• Rules in Quebec, Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan and the other jurisdictions. We could not open their official pages on waterpipes.
• Whether any Health Canada page states how it treats tobacco-free shisha. We did not find one.