It’s the latest rage in glamour drugs, smuggled across Canadian borders or cooked up in secretive labs, but it’s not being peddled on street corners or in shady drug dens.

The highly-addictive “juice” is essentially illegal in this country, yet it’s being sold openly to users — from the neighbourhood bodegas to the mini-mall kiosks — as the stuff is literally flooding a consumer market critics liken to “the wild, wild West.”

The substance is banned, but there is no active enforcement, no regulatory measures or guidelines to control harmful additives, and there are legitimate concerns the nation’s youth are being hooked on a habit that is currently being glamourized by the Hollywood elite.

Most troubling of all to critics, it has the potential to set back public health efforts by decades.

But unlike cocaine, weed, or booze, Canada is instead finding itself in the cross hairs of the great e-cigarette debate, with proponents “screaming from the rooftops” that the devices are saving the lives of smokers by turning them off lethal combustible cigarettes, and onto a viable alternative.

Meanwhile, Health Canada has committed $230,000 to study the numbers of e-cigarettes that are finding their way through Canadian retailers. And despite imposing a ban four years ago, little has been done in the way of enforcement apart from a strongly-worded letter sent to e-cigarette vendors.

But retailers like e-Steam Canada, which got its start in Ottawa two years ago and has now grown to more than a dozen shops across the province — with more expansion plans in store — continue to thrive.

The chain, whose own internal policy prohibits sales to minors and non-smokers, has even opened up shop literally under the noses of lawmakers with a location at 130 Albert St., just steps away from the health agency’s downtown offices.

But retailers are wading through a murky legal territory where confusion reigns among consumers.

The source of at least some of that confusion lies with the sellers themselves.

When asked if the nicotine-rich liquid — kept in a locked cabinet behind the counter — was allowed to be sold in Canada, one clerk responded with a furrowed brow: “It’s a regulated product and it falls within the guidelines.”

Not so, according to Health Canada.

“A company would have to provide evidence of safety, quality and effectiveness in order to have its product authorized,” said agency spokesman Gary Holub. “No such products have been authorized.”

That policy won’t change without scientific evidence, which doesn’t seem to be coming from the medical community.

But while a growing chorus of naysayers cannot be ignored, neither can the voices of legions of “vapers” who swear by e-cigarettes and accept the inherent health risks, which health officials begrudgingly admit are far less harmful than combustible, tar-filled cigarettes.

One 25-year pack-a-day smoker said he made the switch overnight and “never looked back.”

Dr. Jon Ebbert of the Mayo Clinic can see the potential good, but said efforts to research and develop safe and effective products are being “hamstrung” by regulators, while retailers are peddling potentially unsafe products with seemingly free reign.

“You have to get approval to investigate these products, but there are huge hurdles in this enormous regulatory framework,” says Ebbert. “And then we look right next door where they’re selling these things to people, and there’s no regulatory framework. It’s a little unsettling.”

For Dr. Andrew Pipe of the Ottawa Heart Institute, the debate comes at a critical time, with e-cigarettes “re-normalizing” the behaviour of smoking, hooking new nicotine users without turning current users off of the drug.

“It’s not unrealistic to think of these things as an actual gateway to cigarette use, and with the use of flavouring agents, which can make them more attractive, that certainly becomes a concern when adolescents are involved,” says Pipe.

But Pipe sees a much more troubling problem emerging.

With the amount of money changing hands, siphoning money out of a multi-billion dollar tobacco industry, it’s only a matter of time before Big Tobacco — with the aid of the still-powerful U.S. tobacco lobby — gets its hands on a slice of the pie.

“If the tobacco industry gets ahold of these products, they will definitely not be used as a means to help people stop smoking, but rather as a line extension — to enjoy the flavour of tobacco and nicotine in places where you wouldn’t normally smoke.”

aedan.helmer@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @ottsunhelmer