The Canadian federal government recently published draft regulations to ban almost all e-cigarette flavours across the nation, with only tobacco and mint/menthol flavours left untouched. The proposal would also see most flavouring ingredients, including all sugars and sweeteners, banned from use in vaping products, writes Louis Auge.
The bill’s intended purpose is to protect public health by making vaping less appealing to young people. The available evidence, however, suggests that not only could the measure fall short of the mark, it could actually cause more problems than it solves, prompting both young people and adults to take up smoking conventional cigarettes, a far more harmful practice than vaping. Indeed, a recent study by the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) suggested that, after a San Francisco ballot measure banned flavoured vape liquids in 2018, smoking rates increased in the city’s school district after years of steady decline.
Even after adjusting for other tobacco policies, the study found that San Francisco high school students’ odds of smoking conventional cigarettes doubled in the wake of the ban on flavoured vapes. Other studies, meanwhile, have illustrated how flavours are instrumental in prompting adult users to abandon conventional cigarettes—one 2020 study found that adults who used flavoured e-cigarettes were more likely to quit smoking than those who used unflavoured (or tobacco-flavoured) e-cigarettes.
Louis Auge – Eureporter.co – 2021-07-23.
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