Tough anti-vaping laws could have unintended public health consequences, experts warn

As new restrictions at the local, state and federal level are poised to wipe out thousands of fruit-, candy- and dessert-flavored vapes that have attracted teens, experts who study tobacco policy fear the scattershot approach of the clampdown could have damaging, unintended consequences, including driving adults who vape back to cigarette smoking, which remains the nation’s leading preventable cause of death (Source: “Clampdown on vaping could send users back toward cigarettes,” Associated Press via ABC News, Oct. 5, 2019).

“This could take us from potentially the single biggest improvement in public health in the United States toward a public health disaster in which cigarettes continue to be the dominant nicotine product,” said Jonathan Foulds, an addiction researcher and tobacco specialist at Penn State University.

The policy debate underscores the challenge of finding the right regulatory scheme for e-cigarettes, products for which there is little high-quality research.

More than 30 countries prohibit vaping products. In contrast, the United Kingdom has fully embraced them as a public health tool, urging doctors to promote them to help smokers quit. The U.S. FDA has been struggling to find the right approach since it gained authority over e-cigarettes in 2016.

Further complicating the picture is the fact that no e-cigarette brand has yet been shown to help smokers quit in rigorous studies. But large-scale surveys suggest smokers who use e-cigarettes daily are up to six times more likely to quit than those who don’t use them.