A few weeks back, San Francisco voters approved a ban on flavoured tobacco products. A main target of the ban is menthol cigarettes, which are favoured by African-Americans, but supporters of the ban have also been convinced that e-liquid flavours have been luring young people into a lifetime of nicotine addiction.
Differentiating between flavoured cigarettes and flavoured e-liquids
Earlier this year, Ontario Canada implemented a menthol cigarette ban and a small local study indicated that in only a month after being set in place, the ban had already encouraged twice as many smokers to quit than predicted.
In line with this study, research from Yale School of Public Health and the Centre for Health Policy at the Imperial College in London, had also indicated that if menthol flavoured cigarettes alone were to be banned in the US, there would be a 4.8% reduction in smoking rates, as most smokers would either switch to e-cigarettes, or quit. However, this study had also indicated that banning e-liquid flavours would have the opposite effect.
This research which was published last September, was carried out by analyzing the tobacco related behaviour of 2,000 adult smokers and recent quitters. “Our results are timely and policy-relevant, suggesting which flavor bans are likely to be most effective in protecting public health,” said the researchers.
The danger in banning e-liquid flavours
However, besides a reduction in smoking as a result of flavoured cigarettes bans, the compiled data had also indicated that if flavours had to be banned in e-cigarettes and allowed in regular cigarettes, vaping would decline by over 10%, and many former smokers would go back to smoking regular cigarettes, hence cancer and mortality rates would increase. In the meantime, New York’s state legislature is considering a tobacco flavour ban, similar to the one just implemented in San Francisco.
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