File this under "unintended consequences." It turns out that when people are using vapes and e-cigarettes as an alternative to more damaging, traditional tobacco products, restricting those safer products will just drive people back to cigarettes. Who knew?
Well, now we should all know. Two studies are out there that show just this. The first was published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research - it's not new, having been published in 2021, but the conclusions still hold.
Young adult e-cigarette users indicate low support for e-cigarette sales restrictions (both for flavored products and complete restrictions). Moreover, if vape product sales were restricted to tobacco flavors, 39.1% of users reported being likely to continue using e-cigarettes but 33.2% were likely to switch to cigarettes. If vape product sales were entirely restricted, e-cigarette users were equally likely to switch to cigarettes versus not (~40%).
The second is from last year, appears to be still underway, but there are already some interesting data points:
A new study from researchers at the University of Missouri and the Yale School of Public Health found that state restrictions on flavored e-cigarettes led to a decrease in vaping among young adults in the United States. However, those restrictions also led to an increase in traditional cigarette smoking among young adults compared to states without such restrictions.
The findings show that well-intentioned public health policies can have unintended effects — a topic of interest for Mizzou’s Michael Pesko, a professor of economics in the College of Arts and Science.
“We should always be cognizant that any policy will have unintended effects, especially in the public health space. In this case, our study finds flavored e-cigarette restrictions have the unintended effect of sizably increasing cigarette use,” Pesko said. “This is not good from a public health perspective because cigarettes are far more dangerous products. It’s the equivalence (sic) of steering a ship away from a storm straight into a whirlpool.”
Finally, there is a similar report from China. This work has to do with the restrictions on flavored e-cigarettes, and illustrates another danger in over-regulating a product, that being that even in a communist country like China, "alternative" sources will always arise.
Despite the predicted decrease in e-cigarette choices, the predicted choice share of flavored e-cigarettes when they are illegal but loosely enforced is 53% of the predicted share when legal. This large illegal share is consistent with anecdotal evidence and with the evidence from our 2023 background survey that flavored e-cigarettes remain popular after the ban although fewer vapers reported getting their e-cigarettes from specialty or general retailers.
That may well be a polite way of saying "black market."
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Tobacco is a legal product, of course, in the United States and in China. Most of the rather dramatic decrease in smoking hasn't been due to banning particular flavors with which one might spice up tobacco. I also don't buy the "flavored tobaccos designed to attract youths" argument, either. When I was a young man, it seemed smoking was ubiquitous. You could smoke anywhere. The Woolco department store I worked in through the late 1970s had ashtrays literally scattered about. Most restaurants had smoking sections. Airliners had smoking sections. Back then, my friends all smoked, as did I, and it wasn't because the companies and stores enticed us with flavored tobaccos.
Now? It's pretty difficult to find a place to light up, and smoking has dropped dramatically. Leave it to government regulators, though, to find a way to make things worse. Vapes and e-cigarettes are arguably less harmful than traditional tobacco, and here are well-meaning but feather-headed government regulators trying to stomp the brakes on safer alternatives that may well help more people to quit.
It remains, as President Reagan so famously said: Government is the problem.
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