Denver, Colorado Mayor Michael Hancock issued a veto Friday on a flavored vaping and tobacco ban approved by city council on Dec. 6. Approved in an 8-3 vote, the ban was slated to begin in 2023, pending Hancock’s signature.
“I want the public to understand I share the same objective that this bill promoted, but to do it in Denver, it would have only been, in my eyes, symbolic,” Hancock told Denver’s Fox31 news.
Credit: Daniel Jędzura
“Kids could have still crossed the street to Aurora and purchased the product. Businesses were going to be hurt because people would go across the street to procure the product, as opposed to coming into their store where it would be banned, and that to me is just not responsible legislation.”
The measure’s main sponsor, Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, said she had been hearing about the potential for a veto.
“Disappointed, yes, but surprised, no,” Sawyer said. “When I spoke to the mayor earlier today, he and I talked about the potential for other options moving forward. And although we’ve been working on this for a year or so, you know some of those options could have absolutely been pursued by now and haven’t been, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to find a good partnership moving forward.”
Hancock said he isn’t sure what will happen Monday, where the City Council will have the decision to override his veto. The council will need 9 votes to do so.
After months of debate, the Denver City Council approved a controversial ordinance that outlaws the sale of flavored vaping and other tobacco products, including menthol, beginning in July 2023. With Monday’s 8 to 3 vote, Denver becomes the seventh Colorado municipality to enact a ban on flavored e-cigarettes.
Credit: Kevin Ruck
Exemptions are in place for hookah products, natural cigars, pipe tobacco and harm-reduction products. The ordinance also calls for retailers to receive a warning for a first offense, however, subsequent offenses could lead to a store losing its tobacco retail license.
Proponents of the ban argue tobacco companies have long used predatory marketing of menthol to lure people of color, those with low incomes and youth — especially those who identify as LBGTQ+. Companies deny this, according to an article on denverite.com.
“This proposal tonight, it really is about public health,” said council member Jamie Torres, who represents District 3 and voted for the proposal. “Our kids aren’t property owners. They’re not business owners, but they are the ones who are also telling us we need to make this less accessible to them.”
City Council President Staci Gilmore argues that Denver already regulates alcohol and cannabis. “We want to keep kids safe, but we also want to allow adults to be adults,” said Gilmore, who represents District 11, and voted against the measure. Last month, councilmember Kevin Flynn called the bill an overreach affecting adults who want to use these products.
Grier Bailey and Jonathan Shaer, writing for Colorado Politics, state that Denver city councilmembers should consider what’s happened to Massachusetts since it passed a statewide flavor ban of its own in 2020. “The state gave up a well-regulated and enforced network of licensed retailers, lost over $140 million on the sale of menthol cigarettes, and public health advocates can’t claim any empirical health benefits from the ban as the data shows most consumers shifted their purchase habits to other states or other nicotine products and flavors,” they state. “Many Massachusetts retailers have reduced employee hours and even had to cut jobs. The flavor ban has been a failure at every level.”
The city of Bangor, Maine has banned flavored vaping products, including e-cigarettes. The Bangor City Council voted 7-1 in favor of the ban, which will not go into effect until after the Maine Legislature reconvenes next year. The ordinance bans the sale and marketing of all flavored tobacco products in the city — including menthol cigarettes and e-cigarette flavors that have a taste or smell besides tobacco — beginning on June 1, 2022.
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While the amended ordinance falls short of the pre-session ban that advocates hoped would spur the Legislature to action on a statewide prohibition on the sale of flavored tobacco, it is a strong gesture for a council with many members who believe the flavored tobacco issue was better solved at the state level, according to Maine Public Radio.
Opponents and supporters saw the Bangor vote as an important step in the fight to ban the sale of flavored tobacco at the state level. That bill, LD 1550, was reported out of committee earlier this year but had not come to a vote before the end of this year’s legislative session.
Many opponents brought up the contents of messages the National Association of Tobacco Outlets requested under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act that they said showed an effort by Bangor councilors, especially Councilor Sarah Nichols, to not include the voices of merchants in the process of crafting and debating the ordinance. Many of the exchanges are text messages between Nichols and Matt Moonen, who had brought the proposal to ban flavored tobacco to her. Moonen is the executive director of Equality Maine.
Earlier Monday, the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association had called for the council to suspend decisions on the tobacco ban and evaluate how councilors had acted. Sprague, one of several councilors to turn back those arguments, said such allegations had ultimately hurt the opponents’ case.
“The comments about the process and how the city has not supported open dialogue are insulting, if not repulsive,” Sprague said. City Council Chair Dan Tremble was the only councilor to vote against the ordinance. Nichols did not directly respond to statements about her during the meeting, though she referenced them in her remarks on why she supported the ordinance.
Retailers who continued to sell or market flavored tobacco products after the ordinance took effect would first face a warning, and then a $50 to $100 fine for their next offense within a two-year period after the warning. A fine of $300 to $1,000 would then be levied for each additional offense within that two-year period.
A new Yale University study shows that flavor bans cause an increase in underage smoking.
By Maria Verven
A new study by the Yale School of Public Health suggests that San Francisco’s ban on sales of flavored tobacco products may have substantially increased smoking among minors. When San Francisco voters approved a ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes and flavored e-liquids in 2018, public health groups prematurely celebrated another “win” in their battle to reduce teenage vaping.
Now advocates of the ban must come to terms with the fact that the flavor ban, and most likely similar flavor bans around the world, are inextricably tied to significant increases in teenage smoking rates. According to the study, the odds that high school students would start smoking conventional cigarettes doubled in San Francisco’s school district after the ban was put into effect when compared to districts that didn’t implement a flavor ban, even when adjusting for individual demographics and other tobacco policies.
A Threat to Public Health
Published in JAMA Pediatrics in May 2021, the sole author of the study, Abigail Friedman, associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health, said the study is the first to assess how complete flavor bans affect youth smoking habits. “These findings suggest a need for caution,” she said. “Even if it is well-intentioned, a law that increases youth smoking poses a threat to public health.”
Before the ban was implemented, smoking rates in school districts in and around San Francisco were on the decline. Using data on over 95,000 youth from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System’s 2011–2019 school district surveys, Friedman compared trends in smoking rates in San Francisco versus other districts. The findings revealed a glaringly large discrepancy after the flavor ban went into effect. In 2019, San Francisco’s smoking rates rose to more than twice the average of school districts without a flavor ban. In those districts, smoking rates among youth continued to fall.
E-cigarettes—and particularly those with flavors—have been the most popular tobacco product among U.S. youth since at least 2014. “Some kids who vape choose e-cigarettes over combustible tobacco products because of the flavors,” Friedman said. “For these individuals, banning flavors may remove their primary motivation for choosing vaping over smoking, pushing some of them back toward conventional cigarettes.”
Michael Siegel, professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, said society is at a critical juncture with regard to youth smoking. “It has plummeted to record lows and on top of that, a culture of vaping has completely replaced the culture of smoking,” he said. “The policies enacted in the next year could likely decide what happens next.”
Huge Policy Implications
Credit: JAMA Pediatrics
The results of the Yale study should have huge implications for other states and even other countries when deciding to ban flavored vapes. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, five states—California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island—have implemented laws banning flavored electronic nicotine-delivery systems (ENDS), and at least 310 localities have passed restrictions on menthol cigarettes and/or flavored tobacco products (including e-liquids), although these laws vary widely.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration implemented a partial ban on the sale of flavored closed-system e-cigarette products in January 2020. The FDA ban exempts menthol and tobacco flavor as well as open tank vaping systems, which tend to be sold in vape shops where age restrictions are more often enforced.
Members of Congress have been pressuring acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock to ban all flavored e-cigarettes, maintaining that flavors are attracting youth to ENDS products. Woodcock has not indicated whether the agency has plans to ban or otherwise limit the sale of flavored vapes, but a decision could be made this fall.
When asked to comment on the trend that youth use of cigarettes was declining while their use of ENDS products was on the rise, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the trends are not acceptable, even if they are moving in a more positive direction of reduced overall use of tobacco products. “Even if kids are using ENDS [products] instead of cigarettes—and that migration in part accounts for the decline in youth [combustible] cigarette use—that’s still not an acceptable trade,” he said.
Clive Bates, a tobacco harm reduction expert and former director of Action on Smoking and Health U.K., called this argument outrageous, adding that just because a regulatory agency believes young people should not smoke or vape does not mean that is how it plays out in the real world. “Public health is about dealing with the world as you find it—not giving instructions to people who are not listening, uninterested in your views and unimpressed by your authority,” said Bates. “But that doesn’t mean a regulator is absolved of responsibility for the consequences (good or bad) of its actions.”
Since Gottlieb essentially said that the FDA doesn’t care if vaping is helping to reduce smoking, Bates says the FDA is ignoring a big public health benefit that has been a goal of U.S. policy for decades. “The dangerous corollary is [that] the FDA doesn’t care if their anti-vaping measures increase smoking among adolescents. That’s what is so despicable about this lofty attitude—it’s an indifference to the group most at risk,” Bates said. “Yet the FDA doesn’t care if vaping works as an alternative to smoking for adolescents—and this is deeply unethical.”
Generally, regulators do not allow adolescent experimentation to bend adult society and legitimate choices out of shape, especially if these are beneficial to adults, according to Bates. “It should not be taken as a given that adult products that appeal to adolescents should be banned. For many, it is part of being a teenager to sample the forbidden fruits of adulthood,” Bates explains. “We don’t respond to youth experimentation by banning other potentially harmful adult products like alcohol or cannabis just because adolescents use them,” Bates said. “Though it has risen sharply, vaping is not out of the ordinary compared to the prevalence of other risk behaviors. But crucially, it does not actually pose much risk.”
Decisions That Kill
In June, Health Canada admitted in a regulatory impact statement that its intended flavor ban could lead to an increase in the smoking rate. David Sweanor, an industry expert and chair of the advisory board for the Centre for Health, Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Ottawa, said that the Health Canada statement is basically saying Canadian regulators know they are going to do something that kills Canadians.
“Countries that simply allow alternatives, even without actively facilitating substitution, are seeing dramatic declines in cigarette sales,” Sweanor said, citing Japan, where cigarette sales over the past five years declined at a very rapid pace—far greater than declines in other countries, including the U.S. “I think the biggest constraint on progress is a lack of understanding of the magnitude of substitution effects. To dramatically reduce the use of lethal cigarettes, we need products that are less hazardous and evidence that consumers will switch to them in sufficient numbers to justify substitution as a policy intervention.”
Sweanor said efforts that show the extent of substitution effects are blocked by the absence of funding for such research, obstruction from the anti-vaping moralists and those pursuing a “tobacco-free world” agenda. He also believes that tobacco companies may be reluctant to release sales and consumer research data that would bolster policies designed to undermine their lucrative cigarette business. “Jurisdictions that allow viable alternatives to cigarettes, where such products are as accessible as cigarettes and consumers aren’t given misleading information on relative risks, will see far more rapid declines in smoking,” Sweanor said.
Friedman said the findings from her study strongly suggest that policymakers should be careful not to inadvertently push minors into using the more harmful product. When asked to suggest an alternative policy, she suggested that states consider restricting all tobacco product sales to adult-only (21-plus) retailers. “This would substantively reduce adolescents’ access to tobacco products at convenience stores and gas stations without increasing incentives to choose more lethal combustible products over noncombustible options like e-cigarettes,” she said.
Sweanor added that good policies are contagious and would be replicated. “I am confident that science and rationality combined with consumer advocacy will ultimately win,” he said. “Unfortunately, those opposing such policies can cause lengthy delays, which can result in a tragic and avoidable loss of life.”
Science, Reason and Humanism
Abigail Friedman, PhD
Seigel says that there is hope that the Yale study impacts future decisions regarding flavor bans; however, the mainstream anti-tobacco groups are not going to publicize the study because it goes against their preordained conclusions. “If flavor bans are widely adopted, I suspect that many youth who are experimenting with vaping will switch over to cigarette smoking and some will use THC vapes off the black market,” he said. “In contrast, with sensible policies that restrict e-cigarette availability to youth while allowing adult smokers to continue to access them, I think we could drive youth smoking pretty much into the ground—perhaps to a level from which it could never recover.”
Bates questioned how regulators and lawmakers alike could continue with confidence in implementing flavor bans after seeing the results of the Yale study. He added that he seriously questions whether legislators will admit that the ban was a bad idea and reverse course.
“It may put the brakes on some of the worst policy mistakes,” he said. “It’s what many of us have been saying should be expected from a flavor ban. But legislators hate to admit they were wrong, so it will probably lead to calls for tougher enforcement and anti-smoking campaigns rather than realizing that the whole idea is wrong.”
In jurisdictions where viable alternatives to combustible cigarettes are made available, data has shown that the rates of combustible cigarette smoking among youth and young adults is plummeting, according to Sweanor. “More importantly, we are seeing longer term cigarette smokers whose lives are truly on the line, substituting low-risk alternatives,” he said. “People’s response to research depends on motivations. There is a very long and frustrating history of reduced-risk alternatives to cigarettes being attacked by those on a moralist quest to rid the world of nicotine.”
Vaping products are attacked based on accusations about formaldehyde, popcorn lung, e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury (EVALI), cognitive impairments and a seemingly endless list of other supposed hazards, Sweanor explained, adding that these arguments are ultimately shown to be meritless, but vaping opponents never admit to being wrong.
“Such behaviors are hallmarks of conspiracy theorists and those seeking to use the power of the state to impose their moral views on the behavior of others. But where lawmakers are open to science, reason and humanism, studies such as this … [Yale study] are very important,” said Sweanor. “Public health breakthroughs are possible when rational lawmakers get past the panics caused by the moralists. We are staring an historically significant public health breakthrough in the face. The sooner lawmakers recognize this, the sooner we can relegate cigarettes to history’s ashtray.”
The original “Vaping Vamp,” Maria Verven owns Verve Communications, a PR and marketing firm specializing in the vapor industry.
A coalition of 31 U.S. states and territories has penned a letter the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to asking the agency to ban all flavors other than tobacco, limit nicotine levels and restrict the marketing of all electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products. The group wants the regulations to also apply to oral nicotine products such as pouches, gum and lozenges.
Credit: Balint Radu
Led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the group’s letter to the FDA argues that the FDA must address the epidemic of youth use of ENDS products by imposing restrictions and age verifications on traditional and digital marketing tactics aimed towards youth, according to a press release. The group claims that e-cigarettes and oral nicotine products have not received marketing authorization from the FDA, as required by federal law.
“Flavored nicotine products attract kids to dangerous, habit-forming products that only jeopardize their health,” said James. “New York has taken important steps to protect our kids by banning non-tobacco flavored vapor products and limiting the sale of e-cigarettes, but the FDA must also do its part to curb the youth nicotine epidemic. The health and wellbeing of our kids is our top priority and the federal government must act now.”
The FDA must make a decision by Sept. 9 on whether to allow nicotine products to stay on the market through its premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) pathway for any ENDS product that submitted the application by Sept. 9, 2020. The group’s proposed restrictions would require the FDA to deny approval for most products.
The coalition argues that banning candy, mint, fruit, and menthol flavors, is essential to eliminating the appeal of the products to youth consumers. Other signatories to the letter are the attorneys general of Idaho, Illinois, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Additional states joining the letter include Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Guam, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
James has a long history of challenging the ENDS industry. In April 2019, she led a coalition of seven states in urging the FDA to take stronger action in addressing “the scourge of e-cigarette use among youths” by taking proposed measures such as strengthening guidance, beginning enforcement earlier and banning online sales of e-cigarettes.
Later that year, James filed a lawsuit against the electronic cigarette company JUUL Labs for deceptive and misleading marketing of its e-cigarettes, which “contributed to the ongoing youth vaping epidemic in New York state.” In December 2020, James ordered dozens of retailers across New York state to immediately stop selling e-cigarette products to underage customers and to stop selling flavored vaping products in violation of New York state law.
Several recent studies have found that banning flavored vaping products boosts sales of combustible cigarettes and youth use. If vapor product sales were restricted to tobacco flavors, one-third of U.S. vapers between the ages of 18 and 34 would switch to smoking combustible cigarettes, according to at least three known studies.
The Canadian government has proposed restrictions on flavored vape products, which Health Canada acknowledges will result in increased combustible cigarette smoking. The justification for the flavor ban is that flavor restrictions will lessen youth vaping rates, according to the Canadian Vaping Association (CVA). However, youth rates are already in decline.
Credit: Kristina Blokhin
The Canadian Tobacco and Vaping Survey, 2020, found that youth vaping has declined since 2019. Currently, youth daily vaping is 4.7 percent and Health Canada expects the recently implemented nicotine ceiling will further reduce use and experimentation.
“Youth daily vaping and addiction rates are actually quite low and expected by tobacco control experts to continue to decline. Generally, youth vaping rates are discussed using data on the amount of youth that have tried vaping over the past 30 days,” said Darryl Tempest, executive director of the CVA. “This is a poor metric to base regulation on because it represents experimentation and not habitual use. Young people that try vaping once at a party are included in this figure. These surveys are also misleading because they include age of majority respondents. If these respondents were excluded from the survey, daily vaping among minors is around 2 percent.”
In a press release, Tempest stated that if other adult products were regulated consistently with the same concern as past 30-day vape use, both cannabis and alcohol would require severe restrictions, as both daily and past 30-day use prevalence are greater than nicotine vaping.
“Alcohol is considerably more harmful than nicotine vaping and despite its use being significantly more prevalent than vaping among youth, flavor restrictions have not been considered. This is likely because like vaping, youth are not drinking for flavors,” Tempest states. “Canada has set a goal to reduce tobacco use prevalence to 5 percent or less by 2035. Restricting flavors will push thousands of vapers back to smoking and jeopardize current smoking reduction targets. The CVA calls on Health Canada to forgo the flavor ban and instead focus on proven methods such as increased enforcement and education programs.”
City council members in Columbia, Missouri will review a report from the Missouri Board of Health concerning banning flavored vaping products in an effort “to reduce the number of youth vaping in Boone County.”
Credit: Spirit of America
According to an agenda memo, the Board of Health began studying the issue of youth vaping and its impact on mental and physical health in October 2019. Now, the board has sent the report to council, requesting assistance to prevent teen vaping, according to ABC17 News.
The report details three recommendations that could help decrease youth vaping, including zoning restrictions on vape shops, since vape shops can currently operate near schools. Health officials also recommend a ban on flavored vaping products since currently e-cigarettes are “sold in over 15,000 flavors.”
The board is also recommending the council explore higher taxes on vaping products to increase the cost and hopefully reduce use by youth. Multiple studies have found that flavor bans actually boost youth use of tobacco and vaping products.
If vapor product sales were restricted to tobacco flavors, one-third of U.S. vapers between the ages of 18 and 34 would switch to smoking combustible cigarettes, according to a new study in Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
The study analyzed data from February to May 2020 and looked at 2,159 young adults in Atlanta, Boston, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, San Diego and Seattle, examining support for e-cigarette sales restrictions and the perceived impact of flavor and vaping bans.
This study precedes the FDA’s impending Sept. 9 deadline for premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) decisions, which could potentially take most vapor products off the market.
The FDA’s deadline will be “like watching an unstoppable object hit an immovable wall,” said Charles Gardner, executive director of INNCO, a global nonprofit supporting the rights of adults using safer nicotine products. “The FDA must know flavor bans will increase teen, young adult and older adult smoking.”
“In general, the FDA does not comment on specific studies but evaluates them as part of the body of evidence to further our understanding about a particular issue and assist in our mission to protect public health,” an FDA spokesperson said.
Two other recent studies showed similar results. A study in JAMA Pediatrics showed that following San Francisco’s flavor ban, teens were more likely to smoke than those in other school districts. A different study in Nicotine & Tobacco Research shows that teens who vape would be smoking cigarettes if vapes hadn’t become available.
“All hell will break loose if [the FDA] authorize[s] flavors as ‘appropriate for the protection of public health,’” said Gardner. “The Truth Initiative and the Bloomberg-funded Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids have staked their reputations on the public health benefits of flavor bans. And many key leaders in the U.S. Congress believe them.”
E-cigarettes have been banned in India since 2019, but the ‘grey’ market continues to grow.
By Vapor Voice staff
There are more than 100 million cigarette smokers in India. The country suffers from over 1 million tobacco-related deaths each year. But Western-style cigarettes account for only a fraction of tobacco consumption in India. According to data from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) of 2016–2017, India has the second-largest tobacco-consuming population in the world (China is first). An estimated 267 million Indians use tobacco in some form.
Tobacco also plays a significant role in India’s economy. More than 4.2 million hectares of farmland in India are dedicated to growing tobacco. The government also owns a 28 percent stake in ITC, India’s dominant tobacco company. Currently, there are only 19 smoking cessation centers for the nearly 270 million tobacco users, and there is no national policy to make telemedicine or other medical support available, according to the CDC Foundation.
Under the guise of preventing potential health risks to the country’s youth, India banned the “import, manufacture, sale, advertisement, storage and distribution” of e-cigarettes in September 2019. Ministers at the time said the decision aimed at averting health risks related to e-cigarettes. The Indian vaping ban came amid an updated guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO), which encouraged the prohibition of e-cigarettes. India’s ban does not cover the personal consumption of vaping products, although the rule is ambiguous and doesn’t define personal consumption.
Before the vapor ban, many vapers would purchase their products at tobacco shops, known as paanwalas. These shops sold mostly basic 510-threaded vaping devices, low-quality shisha-flavored e-liquids and cheap closed pod systems, according to sources familiar with vaping in India. Shop owners knew little about tobacco harm reduction (THR) and the role vapor products play. A handful of large importers were supplying the shops, and in 2014, ITC even released its own e-cigarette, Eon, that it marketed through the local shops.
India also had a small fraction of vapers, mostly former smokers, that understood the THR concept of vaping and its purpose as a quit smoking aid. “They opened a few shops and were quality conscious. They wanted to help customers stop smoking combustible cigarettes,” said a former vape shop owner, who asked to remain anonymous due to the illegal nature of vaping products in India. “These shops sold mostly high-end brand devices and e-juices from trusted manufacturers. “Almost all of them had online shops and social media presence and nationwide reach, and a few also had brick-and-mortar stores.”
Then came the ban. India’s legal vaping market abruptly stopped overnight. All websites were shut down immediately, sources said. The law, as written, is strict with severe penalties. Initially, all players in the vaping industry in India were terrified. “After some time passed, with little to no enforcement action, the market began to slowly reemerge,” said another former participant in the Indian vape market. “Vendors returned, although in much smaller numbers. The cheap, low-quality vapes are back at the bigger paanwalas. Often these shops do not care what age a customer is when selling tobacco products.”
Amplifying the issue is that most of the employees running the paanwalas do not possess the knowledge to properly educate customers about the usage and maintenance or the pros and cons of vaping products, according to the former vape store owner. “This market needs restrictions and regulations. The less educated, less privileged masses perceive vapes as just another way to exhale dense clouds,” he said. “Also, this market is less afraid of the law because, in most places, the local police have arrangements with small stalls/shops/kiosks of all kinds, where they collect a weekly fee (called a hafta) to look the other way when they flout rules.”
Vaping products are even being displayed on some store shelves now in India. A few of the biggest paanwalas in the cosmopolitan cities reportedly sell Juul and other high-end hardware. It’s not plainly obvious everywhere, and the specialist “vape only” vendors are all clandestine. Most of the specialists are discerning and do not entertain new customers without a reference from a known customer.
“The black market is not large at present. However, as India has a huge population (1.4 billion), even ‘not large’ can be sizable. Unofficial estimates say India had a million vapers before the ban, and there are still approximately 200,000 to 300,000 vapers in the country,” the former market player said. “The penalty for selling vapes to anyone—even an adult—is up to three years in prison and fines up to INR500,000 ($6,700). You will be amazed to know that the penalty for selling [combustible] cigarettes to a minor is only INR200 ($2.75) with no imprisonment. How is this allowed?”
According to Anupam Manur, an assistant professor of Economics at the Takshashila Institution in Bengaluru, banning vapor products has caused the government to lose all controls over the products.
“If a seller is selling an illegal product anyway, what difference would the age of buyer make—whether it is above or below 18 years?” Manur wrote in Business Insider. “Furthermore, since it is illegal, would it make sense for a seller to ensure product quality and safety? There have been numerous reports of substandard and potentially dangerous products being sold in India on the black market,” he said. “It would behoove the government to learn the lessons from the U.K. and the U.S. and choose a harm reduction approach, which would involve developing a regulatory plan for e-cigarettes that maximizes smoking cessation among adults while limiting youth uptake.”
The WHO was more enthusiastic about India’s approach, even giving Indian Health Minister Harsh Vardhan a top award for pushing the policy. Vardhan is a former WHO advisor and was until recently the chair of WHO’s executive board, and hence deeply steeped in the WHO’s anti-THR stance. “His leadership was instrumental in the 2019 national legislation to ban e-cigarettes & heated-tobacco products,” tweeted the WHO secretary-general, Tedros Ghebreyesus, after announcing the award. “Thank you, minister!”
Samrat Chowdhery, director of the Association of Vapers India (AVI) and president of the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organizations, a global consumer advocacy group comprising 40 national and regional bodies, does not expect anything to change in India’s vapor market any time soon.
Samrat Chowdhery
Politics aside, the negative impact of the ban will become clear in time, he says, adding that the nations that have embraced vaping products as THR tools are reaping the rewards of accelerated smoking declines after allowing (and in some cases encouraging) smokers to make the switch.
Countries that have experienced lower health costs because they have embraced vaping products and invested in THR may one day offer enough evidence to force a shift in India’s policy toward e-cigarettes, according to Chowdhery. “Currently, Thailand is the only other major country in Asia that bans safer nicotine inhalation alternatives, and it is worth noting along with India, it too has a state-run tobacco enterprise which is facing competition from replacement products,” said Chowdhery. “China is moving toward regulation too. This ‘ban group’ is likely to shrink further over time.”
If electronic nicotine-delivery system products continue to be available in some form in India, the number of ex-smokers who have switched will continue to grow, according to Chowdhery. With the ban slowing this transition and potentially even halting it, he believes at some point the vaping ban will create its own critical mass to call for a rethink.
“Another possibility is that the courts intervene and either discard the law altogether or create caveats which render the law infructuous. Such challenges require substantial financial backing, which established commerce in this field can support,” said Chowdhery. “The courts have so far been reluctant to delve into this issue because of the emotional ‘think of the children’ pitch attached to it, but over time, rationality and pragmatism will win over. A country with this large of a tobacco problem cannot for long ignore effective measures to reduce related mortality and morbidity.”
The City Council for the District of Columbia (D.C.) voted Tuesday to ban the sale of flavored vaping and other tobacco products in the District, including menthol cigarettes. It was the council’s second vote in favor of the legislation and it now heads to the desk of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, who supports the ban for health reasons. She has stated that she would sign it into law.
Credit: JHVE Photo
The 8-to-5 vote came after a lengthy debate in which legislators who opposed the ban — and even some who favored it — raised concerns that the law could create opportunities for Black smokers to be harrassed by police, and that the city would be unfairly targeting a smoking choice preferred by Black residents, according to the Washington Post. The Council voted 9-3-1 during the first reading at the June 15 legislative session.
In an attempt to avoid police interactions based on the use of flavored vapor products, the council approved a change to the bill Tuesday saying that the law does not give the city’s police authority to act on their own to enforce the vaping ban. The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which can inspect D.C. stores to make sure they are not selling illegal products, could still call in police for assistance.
The council carved out one exception — any hookah bars in the city which already have an exemption from the city’s ban on indoor smoking in restaurants will be grandfathered in, and can continue offering flavored hookah for use on their own premises.
The Biden administration has vowed to eventually outlaw such flavored tobacco products, including menthol, nationwide. The council originally considered banning only e-cigarette products before expanding the bill to include menthol, a step that several legislators opposed.
“If the question is, ‘Is menthol bad for us?’ the answer certainly is yes. But if the question is, ‘Is smoking bad for us?’ the answer also is yes,” said Councilmember Robert White, who voted against the ban. “In the original bill, we were trying to get at things that were targeted toward youth, flavored items. Menthol to me seems like a different category…. I’m seeing this as paternalistic.”
The District joins the state of Massachusetts and some other cities across the country in banning menthol cigarettes, which are popular with Black smokers of all ages, alongside other flavored tobacco products such as the candy- and fruit-flavored e-cigarettes that advocates say are targeted toward inducing teenagers to smoke.
