Banning all e-cigarette flavours will do more harm to the public’s health since it will deny adult smokers to the safer alternatives.
The Michigan Supreme Court recently turned down to re-establish Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency ban on the flavoured e-cigarettes, that have been blocked by the lower courts. With federal government attacking e-cigarettes in the past few weeks, a lot has changed since the original ban of Whitmer in September.
Sadly, the current debate on e-cigarettes that contain tobacco, is confused by many. A Morning consultant Poll found that 2/3 of Americans believe that vaping is more dangerous than traditional cigarettes. This is terribly inaccurate and creditable research studies showed the opposite.
Sad to say the federal government has joined the exaggeration to youth vaping. The Trump administration announced last week the ban of all sales of non-tobacco and menthol e-cigarette flavours in the closed system products.
This included market leader, Juul which already withdrew its fruit and sweet flavours and other cigarettes that are often found in your convenience stores. A bill was signed by President Trump raising the age to 21 to buy tobacco products. The central problem with banning all e-cigarettes flavours is that studies have shown that adults who use these flavours have been more successful to stop smoking. Banning e-cigarettes, while keeping cigarettes on the market will result in an increase in smoking.
Wells Fargo did a survey and found by removing the e-cigarette flavours they had an increase in the sales of traditional cigarettes. Further banning, would drive the vaping market underground and will lead to people returning to traditional cigarettes and young people going to the black market.
Hopefully, the court’s renouncement of the governor’s emergency ban leads to the state coming up with a wiser and more practical long-term public health strategy. Because the ban will do more harm to people’s health than improve it, when flavoured vapes are not available anymore, the nicotine users will not quit, but instead, they will return to cigarettes again.