Yale Study: Flavor Vape Bans May Push More Teens to Cigarettes

On June 9, reports said a new study has taken a different view of San Francisco’s flavored tobacco ban, with a Yale University researcher stating that flavor ban policies may push teenagers toward smoking and combustible cigarettes.

The study, titled “Association of Flavored Tobacco Restriction Policies With Youth Smoking in California’s San Francisco,” was authored by Dr. Abigail Friedman, Assistant Professor of Public Health at the School of Public Health and the Yale School of Public Health and Social Policy Institute.

Friedman is a highly respected scholar and one of the leading experts in 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, increased the likelihood that adolescents would turn to smoking or other potentially more harmful forms of nicotine delivery.

“Compared with other school districts, San Francisco’s ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products 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, the effects may have been greater for teens who vape, since flavored tobacco use is more prevalent among e-cigarette users than among smokers.”

“This raises concerns that reducing access to flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems may encourage young people—who might otherwise have used vaping devices instead of smoking—to smoke instead. In fact, analyses of the relationship between the minimum legal sales age for electronic nicotine delivery systems and youth smoking also suggest this substitution effect.”

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

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