Yale Study: Flavor Bans May Push More Teens to Cigarettes

According to news on June 9, a new study takes a different view of San Francisco’s flavored tobacco ban. A researcher at Yale University said flavor-ban policies may push teenagers toward smoking and using combustible cigarettes.

The study, titled “Adolescent Smoking and the Differential Impact of San Francisco’s Ban on the Sale of Flavored Tobacco Products,” was authored by Dr. Abigail Friedman, Assistant Professor of Public Health at the School of Public Health and the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

Friedman is a highly respected scholar and one of the most prominent researchers in the field of tobacco harm reduction and control.

According to the study’s findings, the ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products implemented in the City and County of San Francisco, California, may have undermined the rate at which young people switch away from smoking or other potentially more harmful nicotine delivery methods.

“Compared with other school districts, San Francisco’s ban on flavored tobacco product sales was associated with an increase in smoking among underage high school students,” Friedman concluded in the study, which was published in JAMA Pediatrics.

“Although the policy applied to all tobacco products, its effects may have been greater for adolescents who use e-cigarettes, given the higher prevalence of flavored tobacco use among e-cigarette users.”

“This raises concerns that reducing access to flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems may motivate young people who would otherwise have used e-cigarettes instead of smoking. In fact, analyses of the relationship between the minimum legal sales age for electronic nicotine delivery systems and youth smoking also suggest such substitution.”

Friedman told reporters: “Although neither smoking nor nicotine use is safe in itself, most current evidence shows that smoking is far more harmful, with nearly one in five adult deaths each year attributable to smoking.”

“Even if well-intentioned, laws that increase youth smoking may pose a threat to public health.”