A Vaping Ban Will Send Smokers Back to the Pack

Banning safe e-cigarette products could reverse the decade long decline in smoking rates.

By Liam Sigaud and Steve Pociask. Sigaud and Pociask write for the American Consumer Institute. Excerpts:

"From early reports, most of the vaping-related illnesses appear to be linked to unregulated home-brews and street concoctions of e-liquids."

"Last week 34 people in New York were reported to have suffered from respiratory illnesses linked to vaping, but investigators found vitamin E acetate in the vast majority of samples they analyzed. This substance is often used as a thickening agent for THC-infused extracts added to vape cartridges. None of these cases involved a nicotine product subject to the new FDA ban."

"most if not all of the recent spate of hospitalizations nationwide due to vaping have been associated with marijuana oil. We aren’t aware of a single case in the whole country that has been associated with nicotine-only e-cigarettes"

"High taxes and restrictions on flavors have created a potentially dangerous black market.

Since the FDA began pressuring Juul Labs, the largest e-cigarette manufacturer in the U.S., to stop selling flavored e-liquids, counterfeits with unknown ingredients and unknown quality standards have proliferated. Modified e-cigarette products from black-market sources have been found to contain harmful contaminants and substandard ingredients."

"The draconian regulatory approach to e-cigarettes may also discourage combustible cigarette smokers from switching to vaping."

"As vaping’s popularity has grown over the last five years, smoking rates have plunged to historic lows. As recently as 1997, 36.4% of U.S. high-school students claimed to have tried cigarettes. By 2017 the high-school smoking rate had fallen to 7.6%."