By Robert Goldberg
In the wake of a rash of vaping related acute lung disease, State Sen. Stephen Sweeney called for banning the sale of all e-cigarette products. While Sweeney’s goal – reducing nicotine addiction – is important, his approach is counterproductive. It is also at odds with the push to legalize recreational marijuana use in New Jersey.
E-cigarette consumption has exploded because people hooked on tobacco use the devices to reduce or stop smoking. At the same time, the use of e-cigarettes by high school kids skyrocketed.
To be sure flavored products contributed to both trends. However, flavored-induced teen vaping is not causing kids to smoke. Peter Hajek, a Queen Mary University of London smoking researcher, points out: "Flavors are a key factor in what attracts people to vaping and what helped them in the initial stages. The key for vapers is the variability, the options of flavors, it’s like there’s a flavor for everyone.”
Additionally, kids do not turn into lifelong vapers. Data from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that while teen e-cig use has climbed, as they grow older (starting around college), they smoke less and vape.
Hajek’s research concludes that “youth who used to smoke are switching to vaping.” A ban would reverse such progress. Hajek notes: “Regular smoking (weekly or daily) among adolescents is at all-time low levels ... and may well virtually disappear.” That won’t happen if nicotine-seeking youth are prevented or frightened away from accessing the safer alternatives and return to smoking."
In fact, making e-cigarette sales illegal in New Jersey while allowing the sale of cigarettes would encourage tobacco use.
Ironically, New Jersey could become the first state to make the sale of e-cigarettes illegal while legalizing the sale of marijuana. That will produce two unintended and counterproductive consequences.
First, counterfeiters, using mostly online stores, would flood the market with Juul-look alikes and other pre-filled flavor modules, including those laced with THC (the substance in marijuana people get high on). Even now, factories dedicated to manufacturing counterfeit products, often in filthy settings, are springing up like weeds in anticipation of such bans. CNBC recently reported that a “raid of 15 Chinese vaping factories found liquids stored on the floor and in dirty storage containers with workers using ketchup-type squirt bottles to inject the liquid into the pods. Employees also used visibly dirty cloths to wipe the excess fluid off the bottle, pods and their hands.”
Second, if e-cigarettes are banned, more people will smoke marijuana instead of vaping. That will lead to more cigarette and tobacco use. Joan Tucker, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, found that more teens and young adults are increasingly using a mix of cannabis and tobacco people. She notes that “there is growing concern that as more states legalize marijuana, there also will be an increase in tobacco use. Co-use of cannabis and tobacco could reverse some of the progress made in reducing rates of tobacco use."
Finally, the lung-related illnesses and deaths due to vaping are troubling. However, we shouldn't forget that smoking causes nearly a half-million deaths each year and is the leading source of lung disease in the United States.
Banning one class of legal and regulated product leads to unregulated use of even more dangerous and addictive substances. Indeed, we’ve seen this movie before. Concerns about opioid addiction metastasized into a frenzied assault on the legitimate use of prescribed pain medications and a significant spike in the sale of fentanyl on the Dark Web and through criminal organizations. Since 2013, the number of fatal overdoses involving synthetic opioids in the United States has risen tenfold, surpassing drug overdoses for heroin or prescription opioids by a factor of two.
A ban on vaping is a triumphant gesture, not a solution. It makes no sense to ban a product that helps people stop smoking, while legalizing pot and keeping cigarettes on the market. We Smart regulation of e-cigarettes can maximize the benefit of people not smoking while minimizing the risk of nicotine addiction, especially in kids. A ban, on the other hand, will hurt public health.
Robert Goldberg is vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. He lives in Springfield.
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