Vaping: the Hard Way to Change

Vaping devices confiscated from students (NPR)

In 2018 San Francisco banned the sale of e-cigarettes, primarily to prevent teenagers from getting hooked on this latest delivery system for nicotine.

A Yale study says the unintended consequence was to increase teen usage of traditional cigarettes, whose smoke causes much more damage to the body than e-cigarettes: [bold added]

When San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a 2018 ballot measure banning the sale of flavored tobacco products — including menthol cigarettes and flavored vape liquids — public health advocates celebrated. After all, tobacco use poses a significant threat to public health and health equity, and flavors are particularly attractive to youth.

But according to a new study from the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), that law may have had the opposite effect. Analyses found that, after the ban’s implementation, high school students’ odds of smoking conventional cigarettes doubled in San Francisco’s school district relative to trends in districts without the ban, even when adjusting for individual demographics and other tobacco policies.

When politicians are convinced of the righteousness of their position, and when these politicians hold the power to impose their will, banning of supposedly harmful products and services seems like the quickest and easiest course of action.

We have seen how, in the case of Prohibition, drugs, gambling, and prostitution, criminalizing these behaviors never eliminates them. Moreover, the unintended consequences, i.e., creating black markets or forcing addicted consumers to choose more harmful substitutes, can make things worse.

It took half a century of public education and regulation to reduce consumption of conventional tobacco products to its current level of 14% of the U.S. adult population. To effect permanent change the right way is usually the hard way.