harm reduction

Thailand’s Nicotine Vape Ban Harms Consumers and Public Health

BANGKOK, TH – Last week, the Thai House of Representatives approved a report proposing three potential approaches to regulating vaping and heated tobacco devices, reinforcing the existing ban, regulating HTPs while maintaining a vape ban, or legalizing both under stern regulations.

However, defying harm reduction efforts, lawmakers dismissed legalization, citing dubious concerns about health concerns, youth access and enforcement challenges. This effort is not just misguided, but an assault on consumer choice and effective harm reduction.

Shrey Madaan and Tarmizi Anuwar, regional representatives of the global consumer advocacy group Consumer Choice Center, criticized Thailand’s denialism that will continue to harm adult consumers.

“Prohibition doesn’t eliminate demand—it fuels black markets. This is evident in countries that have imposed vaping bans, only to see illegal trade flourish,” said Shrey Madaan, India Policy Associate.

“Bhutan’s tobacco ban, once praised as a model for public health, collapsed under the weight of rampant smuggling, forcing the government to reverse course. When governments outlaw safer alternatives while leaving combustible cigarettes on the shelves, they create a perfect storm for organized crime and lost tax revenue,” added Madaan.

The claim that banning vapes and heated tobacco products is essential to protect youth is flawed. Flavored vape products are 2.3 times more effective at helping adult smokers switch from cigarettes. The real health crisis isn’t an alternative nicotine product but continued dominance of the traditional tobacco market.

Thai policymakers are turning blind eye to concrete scientific evidence that establishes vaping and heated tobacco products are significantly safer alternatives to smoking. Public Health England’s finding has suggested that vaping is about 95% less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

Nations like the UK and Sweden have embraced harm reduction, leading to sharp decline in smoking rates and smoking related deaths. Sweden, which permits use of nicotine pouches, snus and vapes has observed a 55% decline in smoking in a decade and has cancer rates 41% lower than Europe’s average. Japan has also observed a drop in cigarette consumption following the introduction of heat-not-burn devices.

“The best solution is not an outright ban but a more holistic approach through education and awareness,” said Tarmizi Anuwar, Malaysia Country Associate.

“An effective approach should focus on consumer education and parental responsibility rather than merely enforcing bans that may ultimately encourage the black market. Awareness campaigns based on facts, rather than fear-based tactics, should be promoted to educate young people about making better choices and the consequences of irresponsible nicotine use. Additionally, parents play a crucial role in monitoring and guiding their children in making informed decisions. Effective regulations must balance consumer freedom with regulatory mechanisms that do not infringe on individuals’ rights to choose,” concluded Anuwar.

Thailand remains a hotspot for cigarette tourism, with smoking rates exceeding 19%, much higher than the global average. Rather than embracing proven harm reduction tools, lawmakers are doubling down on prohibition. Previous attempts at modernizing the law have unfortunately fallen short.

The Consumer Choice Center believes there’s a dire need to focus on smart regulation and consumer awareness. If Thailand truly desires to curb smoking-related deaths, it should follow the science, not outdated fears.

The CCC represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe. We closely monitor regulatory trends in state and national capitals, as well as other hotspots of regulation, and inform and activate consumers to fight for #ConsumerChoice.

Learn more at consumerchoicecenter.org.

Elon Musk is right about the fun police

Right after the 2024 election, Tucker Carlson ramped up the promotion of his new nicotine pouch product, prompting Elon Musk to weigh in on the conservative host’s challenge to Zyn by calling out the “fun police” who stand against both Tucker’s odd humor and his zeal for pouches. The fun police are real, and they’ve shapeshifted and moved between political parties from era to era.

Politics has gotten weird, especially if you grew up at the turn of the century during the George W. Bush administration when the definition of counter-culture was to blast Green Day’s American Idiot while blogging about Monsanto and bumming cigarettes at Warped Tour. Today, that same left-wing movement is the vanguard of what Noah Rothman and Andrew Doyle both dubbed “The New Puritans” in their 2022 books about the left’s prudish energy regarding speech and expression.

That censoriousness didn’t end with moral panics over comedy and open debate on college campuses, instead, it has stretched into the realm of lifestyle choice to such an extent that smoking alternatives like nicotine pouches have been labeled as right-wing subculture. No one has ever researched this, but you could probably find a strong correlation between avid fans of Rage Against the Machine and support for banning gas-powered lawn tools, flavored vapes, plastic straws, and menthol cigarettes. We live in times where Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong put his reputation on the line for Kamala Harris, of all people.

The American left’s realignment as a neo-prohibitionist block took hold in 2012 when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his plan to ban sugary drinks in NYC. In the years prior, Bloomberg had become the symbol of government activism around personal health with his action against trans fats, pushing restaurants to cut salt from their menu by 20 percent and sky-high taxes on cigarettes to discourage smoking.

It was a very different world. Michael Barbaro, now known for his New York Times podcast The Daily, wrote in the NYT about Bloomberg’s noxious hypocrisy on nanny-state regulations. Barbar cataloged the Mayor’s well-known habits ranging from salting his pizza to salting his popcorn so heavily that it “burns the lips”. HuffPost reporter on right-wing politics, Christopher Mathias, ripped into Bloomberg’s cigarette taxes as the cause of NYC’s thriving black market for “loosie” cigarettes.

“People have the right to get fat and drink too much, and I should have the right to smoke without being taxed out of next month’s rent,” said Mathias, just a few years before Eric Garner would be infamously killed at the hands of a New York City cop after being caught selling loosie cigarettes outside a bodega. The probationary policies of Bloomberg had predictably led to a black market for consumer products, and even more predictably led to tragedy when the crackdown on lifestyle freedom was enforced.

If the Democrats had to own the handwringing over warning labels on profane music thanks to Tipper Gore, Democrats had to absorb the brand damage thanks to their most high-profile mayor going to war against soda.

If the politics of the “fun police” are confusing, you’re not alone. It’s just as strange that Democrats are leading the crackdowns on nicotine pouches, which help lower smoking rates, as it is that Republicans are more likely to appear on irreverent podcasts with MMA fighters and roast comedians.

If Footloose was being made today, you’d have to put money on the anti-dancing Reverend Shaw Moore being a Democrat. Dancing and revelry between teenagers could lead to unsanctioned physicality that makes someone somewhere uncomfortable. The puritanism of the modern left started with nanny state lifestyle regulations, fused with #MeToo in 2017, and racialized after the riots of 2020.

The end result is a once counter-cultural political party whose standard bearer is afraid to sit down for a chat with abortion advocate and psychedelics know-it-all, Joe Rogan.

Elon Musk isn’t wrong. The fun police are out there and they really don’t like whatever Tucker Carlson is up to in his whimsical new chapter as a Maine-based podcaster with his own line of nicotine pouches. You can always be certain, however, that the fun police change sides when you least expect it. Keep a mirror handy, because you might see them there too, one day.

Stephen Kent is the Media Director of the Consumer Choice Center

To President-Elect Trump: A Return To Consumer Choice

November 8, 2024
By Stephen Kent
In Alcohol, Antitrust, Blog, Tariffs, Tech Regulation
0 comments

Donald Trump has been elected to return to the White House in an overwhelming election against Vice President Kamala Harris. Many factors drove the US electorate toward supporting Trump-Vance, among them concerns about the economy, inflation, and the cost of living in America, as well as illegal immigration and the scope of government in people’s lives. Despite some indicators that Team Trump envisions a more activist federal government, Trump’s voters have resoundingly expressed a preference for less government in their lives. At the Consumer Choice Center, our chief concern has been ensuring that consumers of goods, products, and services have the maximum autonomy to make decisions about their own lives, health, and preferences.

The freedom to vote with your wallet in everyday life is a core principle of our work and an indicator of how free a society truly is. Over the past four years, the Biden Administration has opened up a multifront war on consumer choice with inquisitions against tech innovation, free speech and privacy online, corporate mergers and acquisitions that lower prices and improve services, and even using federal agencies to discourage choice around responsible alcohol consumption and buying gas-powered cooking implements for home use.

Over the next four years, President-Elect Donald Trump and JD Vance have an opportunity to get America back on track with a new approach on these issues:

1. Rein in the FTC’s Overreach and Focus on Genuine Consumer Harm

To strengthen consumer freedom and choice, the administration should work to rein in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and refocus its mission on addressing actual consumer harm. Under Chair Lina Khan, the FTC has aggressively pursued popular, successful companies, not necessarily because of consumer complaints or harm, but rather due to a general suspicion of large market players. This has been a spending boondoggle and dampened public trust in the FTC’s role as a consumer watchdog. Instead of targeting companies solely for their marketplace successes, the FTC should prioritize cases where consumer welfare is demonstrably threatened—like fraud, deceptive practices, or anti-competitive behavior that limits choices. Reorienting the FTC’s efforts back toward genuine consumer protection would ensure its resources are used effectively and that enforcement actions genuinely benefit consumers, rather than punishing companies simply for being innovative and experiencing growth.

2. Protect Digital and Data Privacy Rights

As more commerce and consumer services move online, data privacy becomes essential for consumer freedom and choice. Ensuring consumers can control their personal data and trust online services is key. Legislation or executive action that reinforces data protection while promoting transparency could strengthen consumers’ choices and security.

A reasonable national data privacy law that strengthens user privacy while providing streamlined certainty to firms that offer services to consumers can achieve this. As the Internet becomes more integral to our personal and economic relationships, reasonable measures to protect our information from both bad actors and government overreach should be addressed.
Added to this, the jawboning of various tech services and forced deplatforming and censorship of free speech online throughout the Biden Administration demonstrated the necessity and sanctity of Section 230. We hope the Trump Administration continues to uphold this vital piece of American law, granting online publishers and platforms the flexibility they need to offer consumers great services and products online.

3. Unleash Broadband Connectivity by Expanding LEO Satellite Networks

President-Elect Trump has a prime opportunity to bridge the digital divide by enabling more Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to expand broadband access nationwide. The Biden administration poured nearly $65 billion into broadband initiatives as part of its Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, intending to connect millions of Americans to high-speed internet. However, many rural and underserved areas remain disconnected, bogged down by a regulatory approach that has struggled to deliver promised connectivity. By reducing bureaucratic hurdles and allowing more LEO satellites to launch, the Trump administration could rapidly expand high-speed internet access to hard-to-reach communities. LEO satellites, unlike traditional broadband infrastructure, offer near-global coverage without costly ground installations, making them ideal for remote and rural areas. With streamlined approval processes and incentives for satellite providers, Trump could fast-track a new era of connectivity—one that sidesteps the red tape that has stalled progress and finally connects Americans wherever they live.

4. Encourage Free Trade Agreements with Liberal Democratic Allies

An important step to enhancing consumer freedom in the 21st century is to foster free trade agreements among American allies among liberal democracies. Tariffs and the shadow of trade war has been a staple of the Trump campaign since he first entered politics in 2016. President Biden even went so far as to borrow tariff policy from Donald Trump as a means to shore up American domestic business interests. The problem remains, what is best for consumers on tight budgets who prioritize affordability?

By creating a robust trade network with countries committed to fair practices and liberal democratic norms, the U.S. can not only provide consumers with more diverse, affordable options but also curb the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the global economy. The CCP has repeatedly acted as a bad-faith player in international commerce—using subsidies, intellectual property theft, and market manipulations that undermine free-market principles. Rather than responding with blunt protectionism, which often limits consumer choices and drives up costs, the U.S. can lead a coalition of like-minded nations that champion open markets, transparency, and fair competition. Such a united front could better compete with CCP-backed entities and preserve a fairer, freer global marketplace for consumers worldwide. In practice, that means being committed to free trade with allies and thinking bigger about fairness in trade.

5. A Light Touch Approach to Crypto and 21st Century DeFi Tools

President-Elect Trump has a unique opportunity to unleash the potential of cryptocurrency and strengthen financial freedom for Americans by adopting an innovation-friendly approach. 2024 was the first election in history where both Republican and Democrat campaigns made an appeal to consumers in the crypto market. This is monumental progress toward consumer financial freedom. Trump and Vance could promote a clear, light-touch regulatory framework, giving consumers and entrepreneurs confidence in their investments without stifling growth. Worthwhile legislation to ban the introduction of a Central Bank Digital Currency, reform the Bank Secrecy Act, promote a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, and provide a regulatory path for stablecoins to boost the American dollar would be key to this success.

Reducing barriers for crypto exchanges and clarifying tax rules would also make it easier for Americans to access and invest in digital assets. President Trump could also encourage decentralized finance (DeFi) tools (especially considering he’s the head of one), empowering individuals to manage finances outside traditional banks and credit card companies. Finally, by working with international allies on shared standards, Donald Trump could ensure the U.S. remains a leader in this global industry—especially crucial as China tightens control over its own digital currency. With this approach, Trump could position the U.S. as a hub for crypto innovation, reaping economic benefits while safeguarding consumer choice and financial freedom. Republicans in Congress will need to be rapidly educated on the mechanics of cryptocurrency and decentralized finance tools, lest enemies of this sector such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, set the tone in Washington on this issue.

6. More Transparency In Healthcare Will Go A Long Way For Consumers

The incoming Trump administration has an opportunity to drastically improve the healthcare space in a way that will greatly benefit consumers and patients. One easy first step would be to require that health insurance firms increase transparency and publicly release meaningful data on which services require pre-authorization, how often pre-authorization requests are denied, how often coverage is denied, and other crucial metrics to help consumers make more educated decisions when entering into insurance plans.

Additionally, while President-Elect Donald Trump has previously endorsed an “America First” mentality, it is our hope that this does not negatively bleed into healthcare policy. He’s previously championed the “Most Favored Nation” rule, which allows foreign governments to decide the value of certain medicines. In reality, this price-setting mechanism would cause disruptions to patient access to certain medications while disincentivizing important medical innovation. A better path forward will be to allow meaningful competition amongst manufacturers while maintaining strong intellectual property protections that safeguard and promote more research and development.

7. End the World Health Organization’s Meddling in US Policymaking

President-Elect Donald Trump and JD Vance need to act quickly to diminish the influence of the World Health Organization (WHO) in U.S. policymaking on consumer products. One of the most pressing live issues where the WHO’s presence can be felt is the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) study of the health impacts of adult alcohol consumption, which is designed to rework the US Dietary Guidelines and discourage any and all safe consumption of alcohol products. Consumer choice matters, and the WHO’s research has been shown to be tainted by activist bias and published in disregard of the most reputable scientific research on the health impacts of responsible enjoyment of alcohol. The same goes for the international campaign against nicotine products that are reducing the harm of smoking combustible tobacco in the US, UK and Canada. The FDA has stonewalled the growth of smokeless nicotine products, despite evidence from within the EU that shows the enormous public health potential of offering smokers an alternative. Donald Trump and JD Vance can get this balancing act right and get the federal government on the side of harm reduction and sound science by increasing skepticism within federal agencies of the World Health Organization.

United States Vaping Index 2024

South Africa’s prohibitionist approach to public health paved the way for the failed generational ban

A slippery slope argument is correct when it takes time to explain how reasonable initial ideas can lead to a disastrous outcome that proponents did not foresee.

Checking in on Michael Bloomberg’s multi-million dollar global crusade against harm reduction

July 14, 2023
By Yaël Ossowski
In Blog, Harm Reduction Campaign, Harm-Reduction
1 comment

For years, we’ve covered the extent of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s multi-million dollar campaigns to try to shape the lives of ordinary consumers.

What began as an erstwhile nanny state campaign on Big Gulps in New York City has ballooned into a massively funded operation that uses grants and NGO funding on many tobacco issues, mostly on outlawing nicotine alternatives like vaping products.

In 2019, Bloomberg pledged $160 million to get US states and localities to ban flavored vaping products, mostly funneled to anti-tobacco groups who’ve pivoted from “stop smoking” campaigns to “stop consuming nicotine in all forms.”

Those efforts quickly scaled to the level of the World Health Organization, including funding US anti-tobacco groups in the millions to even go so far to completely outlaw nicotine alternatives in developing countries across Latin America, Asia, and more. While nations on these continents typically have larger smoking populations than in the US and Europe, they have thus far been deprived of the life-saving nicotine alternatives that would serve as a less harmful switch away from smoking.

In the name of “halting tobacco,” Bloomberg and the organizations he funds have actively sought to poison the well of tobacco harm reduction by miscasting vaping products as “just as bad” as combustible tobacco. Even though health agencies in nations such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and even Canada actively recommend vaping products to get smokers to quit, this option is kept off the table in developing nations where Bloomberg has influence.

In February of this year, Bloomberg’s commitment to severely restrict harm reduction increased significantly to nearly $420 million, hoping to drive a larger global campaign in 110 countries around the world to cut off citizens from nicotine alternatives that are less harmful.

Over $280 million of that money will focus on developing countries, offering grants to political groups, health agencies, and politicians to implement a zero-tolerance nicotine agenda.

The issue with Bloomberg’s approach, and by extension the dozens of health and anti-tobacco groups he funds, is their denial of the real scientific evidence on tobacco harm reduction.

Rather than endorse the market-derived alternatives that have been successful in getting adult smokers to quit – much more effectively than government education programs – they have created a false equivalence between the vape and the cigarette.

That not only harms public health, but continues to fester a narrative of misinformation that has captured many public health researchers and government agencies. We know this all too well from our cross-national survey of health practitioners in Europe, in which many doctors were simply unaware of the growing category of less harmful nicotine alternatives like vaping, heat-not-burn sticks, nicotine pouches, and more.

As Bloomberg continues his global crusade against harm reduction, and many groups pick up his baton to carry out policies to deny safer options to smokers who need them in developing countries, researchers and activists must continue to underscore the need for options and consumer choice when it comes to nicotine alternatives.

Consumers, political leaders, and community activists must uphold the both scientific and anecdotal evidence provided by the consumer-led revolution in harm reduction. Only then can we continue to save lives, influence better policy, and ensure a generation of people who will have more options to live their lives, not less.

The FDA is betraying millions of consumers by killing one of the most popular anti-smoking devices

June 22, 2022
By Yaël Ossowski
In Harm Reduction Campaign, Recent Media, Vaping
1 comment

Washington, D.C. – The Food & Drug Administration is reportedly set to deny Juul’s pre-market authorization applications, which would effectively ban all Juul nicotine vaping products in the United States.

The Consumer Choice Center calls the FDA’s actions a “betrayal” for consumers and former smokers who have used Juul and other vaping products to quit smoking.

“The FDA is ratcheting up its all-out Nicotine Prohibition Campaign, this time by leaking that it will soon rip popular Juul products from the shelves of gas stations, convenience stores, and vape shops,” said Yaël Ossowski, deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center.

“This is an act of betrayal to the millions of former smokers who have switched to less harmful products like Juul to get them away from cigarettes. When you add this specific FDA marketing denial to the tens of thousands of others from smaller vapor companies, the FDA has explicitly chosen the anti-scientific stance of denying that harm reduction is a significant tool in getting smokers to switch.

“The fact that we are in a time of economic uncertainty, high gas prices, and rising inflation, and the Biden Administration and its agencies are more focused on removing legal products from consumers’ hands tells you all you need to know. This administration does not care about consumers, and it cares even less about your health,” said Ossowski.

RELATED: The CCC recently hosted the Menthol Melee to explore the impact of the FDA’s looming bans on menthol and flavored tobacco products, again underscoring the agency’s troubling rulemaking.

The case for permissionless innovation in tobacco harm reduction

April 4, 2022
By Yaël Ossowski
In Blog, Harm Reduction Campaign, Vaping
14 comments

By Yaël Ossowski

As a consumer advocate enamored with technology, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a new product or service providing a solution to an old problem.

The entire world of Bitcoin — lightning nodes, censorship resistance, and frictionless cross-border payments — is doing wonders for financial freedom and security.

Ride-sharing and home-sharing apps are putting dormant property to use, providing income for drivers and homeowners and rides and places to stay for tourists and students.

And when it comes to tobacco harm reduction, innovation is picking up at breakneck speed, offering new and more effective ways to wean smokers off the harms of cigarettes. At another time, this is something public health organizations would have praised.

Pod vaping devices, open tanks, synthetic nicotine disposables, snus, heated tobacco products, and nicotine pouches are offering precisely what former smokers need without the same level of risk, all varied to some degree.

It is the permissionless innovation of this entire field — entrepreneurs large and small — that provides such hope to us technological optimists and harm reduction advocates. It excites us to the opportunities that progress can provide.

But for opponents of this particular shade of innovation — whether health groups, academics, or competing lobbies — the very nature of how these products come to be is what so concerns them.

The vast majority of vaping products and alternative tobacco products are not spawned from public grants, university studies, or government programs, but rather from the process of entrepreneurial discovery, offering solutions to problems that exist in society.

This could be a former-smoker turned vaping entrepreneur with a thriving flavored liquids business run out of his garage, a multinational tobacco firm with thousands of employees, or a group of engineering students who just want to create a cool and safer alternative to the daily pack of cigarettes.

These entrepreneurial forces are reacting to a demand in the market, namely, millions of smokers who want to stub their last cigarette. For many of us, this is a positive example of permissionless innovation. For others, it is nothing more than greed and exploitation.

One can understand that the institutions and lobby groups that oppose efforts at tobacco harm reduction are threatened by private industries providing solutions more effective than the status quo. Or perhaps they even question their intentions.

But the fact remains that millions of former smokers, driven by their own conscious wants and needs, have found an alternative that works for them, provided by firms and entrepreneurs who did not ask for the permission of authorities. That is how our market economies should work.

To that end, new lines of nicotine pouches, vape mods, and disposable vapes are debuted on the market each day, some better than others.

Many of these innovators will fail: perhaps they will create a product that fails to gain customers or blur ethical lines on their advertising that eventually send them to court. Or, as in most cases, will vastly underestimate the cottage industry of governmental lobbying that can only be navigated by the most skilled and politically-connected industries, as the US Food & Drug Administration’s byzantine PMTA process has demonstrated.

That said, we should continue to cheer the innovators that provide us with solutions. And we should support them when their interests, and by extension, ours, are threatened by burdensome regulations and bureaucratic decrees.

When legislators are fed false narratives about lung illnesses and their connection to legal vaping products, as the 2019 EVALI crisis demonstrated, or perhaps are confronted with bombastic claims about a youth vaping epidemic, we must stand up for the people for precisely the people who will be hurt by spontaneous legislation: the adult users of the drug who just want a better option.

There are real externalities that must be dealt with: youth access, dangerous products laced with other compounds, and faulty devices that endanger users.

But we cannot kneecap the permissionless innovation in tobacco harm reduction that is saving lives and giving us solutions we couldn’t even imagine. If that remains a priority for consumer advocates like myself, it will have made all the difference.

Yaël Ossowski is deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center.

Smoking is up for the first time in a generation. The public health lobby is to blame

January 13, 2022
By Yaël Ossowski
In Blog, Harm Reduction Campaign, Harm-Reduction, Vaping
2 comments

By Yaël Ossowski

It often takes a long time for health policy influencers, advocates, and proponents to admit fault.

When it is about topics such as diet fads, saturated fats, food pyramids, and sugar consumption, long-held consensus beliefs and government actions later proved erroneous have had a lasting negative impact.

But nothing has been more egregious and harmful in our current age than the public health lobby’s persistent denialism of the harm reduction value of nicotine vaping products and other alternatives to cigarettes.

That denialism has come in many forms: public information campaigns demonizing vaping devices, misinformation on lung illnesses caused by tainted cannabis cartridges, bans, restrictions, and taxes on flavored nicotine products (especially those without tobacco), Kafkaesque market authorization applications handled by the drug regulators, and a never-ending crusade to deny adult consumers from having access to life-saving products because of illicit and risky behavior by teens.

These public health bodies, anti-smoking groups, and allied journalists, whatever their intent, have sought to convince the public that not only is smoking bad and dangerous — an easy admission — but also that alternative nicotine devices like vaping products, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco are just as or even riskier than a pack of smokes.

Those conclusions are easily debunked by the millions of passionate vapers who have long since put down cigarettes and taken up customized tanks, vaporizers, and flavored liquids that give them a familiar nicotine sensation without the tar and combustible byproducts of tobacco.

The public health mission to muddy the popular perception of nicotine alternatives such as vaping — even though it is scientifically proven to be 95% less harmful than cigarettes — is causing actual damage to American public health. And now we have the proof.

That proof is found both in the increased sales of cigarettes nationwide and also in a highly concentrated study on teen smoking in a jurisdiction where flavored nicotine vaping was outlawed.

According to the sales figures collected by the Federal Trade Commission for its 2020 Cigarette Report, Americans bought more cigarettes in 2020 than they have in more than a generation.

“The total number of cigarettes reported sold by the major manufacturers, 203.7 billion units in 2020, increased by 0.8 billion units (0.4 percent) from 2019, the first increase in cigarettes sold in twenty years,” cites the report.

Americans could be buying more cigarettes for a multitude of reasons: lockdowns, stress from both the pandemic and the government responses to the pandemic, job losses, closed schools, and more. Or perhaps because they’ve been told repeatedly by trusted public health sources and news outlets that vaping, an alternative that millions of adult consumers are now using to quit smoking, is just as dangerous.

Whatever your conclusion, the trend that lowered the percentage of US smokers down to 14 percent in 2019 (when the last complete nationwide survey was completed) is halting. And that should concern us all.

We see anecdotal echoes of this in a recent style piece in the New York Times, highlighting the “comeback” of cigarettes among the bourgeois hipster crowd in Brooklyn, New York.

“I switched back to cigarettes because I thought it would be healthier than Juuling,” claimed one woman. It seems the public health lobbies have done their job.

The pandemic, and cultural shifts, are clouding our progress. One young woman "returned to cigarettes as a means of decreasing her vape use." And a young guy says, “I switched back to cigarettes because I thought it would be healthier than Juuling.” https://t.co/ErhbI412f7
— Cliff Douglas (@cdoug) January 12, 2022

On the more evidentiary side, an extensive May 2021 article published in JAMA Pediatrics found that after San Francisco’s ban on flavored vaping and tobacco products, more teens took up smoking.

“San Francisco’s ban on flavored tobacco product sales was associated with increased smoking among minor high school students relative to other school districts,” concludes the paper.

As tobacco harm reduction advocates have claimed for several years, the persistent public health campaigns, echoed by headline-grabbing media outlets, to demonize and restrict access to vaping has led to a predictable rise in smoking rates, both among adults and teens.

Whatever your view on whether vaping devices, heated tobacco, snus, or nicotine pouches are the most attractive and effective gateway away from smoking, this recent uptick in smoking demonstrates actual harms result when politically-charged health lobbies seek to extinguish market alternatives. And we must ask why they persist.

The opposition of these groups, along with affiliated journalists and researchers, to the rise of nicotine alternatives may have less to do with quantitative questions of science and health and more to do with how these products were created and are delivered: by entrepreneurs providing solutions in the market.

These entrepreneurs are vape shop owners, makers of vape liquids, gas station owners, vaping technology firms, tobacco firms pivoting to alternative products, and an entire creative class of vaping influencers both on and offline who are trying to give smokers a second chance at a long life. These are the true heroes of harm reduction in the 21st century.

The fact that spontaneous markets can deliver helpful and healthier solutions because of consumer demand, rather than by edicts, funding, and programs directly controlled by public health bureaucracies and agencies, runs counter to much of the ideology in the tobacco control space.

It is the former, therefore, that is the true American innovative spirit that has helped make this country so prosperous and competitive, while the latter has failed us again and again.

If we want to reclaim a true public health victory and help smokers quit to give them long and fruitful lives, it is time to cast aside this aversion to the innovations of the market. The future health of our nation depends on it.

Yaël Ossowski is deputy director at the Consumer Choice Center

Stop the war on nicotine: Six Reasons

From Smoking to Vaping

The Myth of the Vaping Crisis is Sparking a New War on Flavored Nicotine Products – And That Harms Consumers

February 10, 2020
By Yaël Ossowski
In Harm Reduction Campaign, Harm-Reduction
0 comments

In the backdrop of a very busy Congress, members of the U.S. House are pushing a bill that would eradicate entire categories of flavored nicotine products.

This sweeping ban would directly harm consumers who use menthol tobacco, flavored cigars, snus, and vaping products by outlawing the products they use and pushing them to the black market.

The proposed law comes in the wake of the much-hyped “vaping crisis” that transpired over the summer, in which thousands of individuals suffered lung damage from inhaling vapor products, also called e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI).

In the end, the culprit was revealed to be illegal cannabis vaping cartridges loaded with Vitamin E acetate and not nicotine vaping products, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Read the Consumer Choice Center Policy Primer: Myths and Facts on Vaping: What Policymakers Should Know

Though scientific experts correctly identified the cause of the injuries – black market THC cannabis vape cartridges – that hasn’t stopped legislators from using that pretext to introduce new prohibitions on flavored tobacco products used responsibly by adult consumers.

H.R. 2339, named the Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act of 2019, proposes several sweeping changes to flavored consumer products and is expected to soon hit the House floor for a vote.

The bill would outlaw the following:

Menthol products
Flavored cigars and cigarillos
Flavored smokeless tobacco, known as snus or dip.
Some flavored vaping products

The goal is to significantly reduce or eliminate youth use of these products, which is a noble pursuit.

But youth smoking is at an all-time low

Fewer young people than ever are using traditional tobacco products – less than 2.3%. That’s a significant decline since the year 2000, where nearly 15% of minors smoked cigarettes, according to the CDC.

This represents a public health victory, and one that has been achieved with sensible education, regulation, and innovation. The same is true for adult smokers. Just 13.7% of adults currently smoke, the lowest number ever recorded.

The latest CDC figures show that 20.8 percent of high schoolers have vaped at least once in the last 30 days. But 7 to 8% of those were vaping cannabis rather than nicotine.

A total flavor ban on all tobacco products and vaping products for adults would do little to curb use among youth.

It may even exacerbate the problem and only punish lawful adult consumers and deprive them of their choice, not to mention devastate the communities that rely on tobacco taxes to fund important social programs.

What’s more, by categorizing non-tobacco vapor products as tobacco products, House members are attacking the very innovation that has led to the lowest-ever figure of recorded tobacco use.

Prohibition Hasn’t Worked

The 100-year anniversary of the passage of Prohibition of alcohol took place last month.

All these years later, we know that outlawing certain consumer products does not eradicate their existence. Rather, it moves them from the legal, regulated market to the illicit and unregulated black market.

This makes the products themselves less safe, and the trade around those products even more dangerous.

After an entire nation had awoken to the disaster of Prohibition, it was successfully repealed in 1933.

Minorities are more likely to use menthol products

According to the CDC, African-Americans who use tobacco are 90% more likely to favor menthol products and represent the vast majority of consumers in the flavored tobacco market.

A ban would create an illicit market without regulations or ID checks
Such bans would then force police officers to crack down on illicit menthol cigarette trade, further straining relations between the African-American community
As seen in the case of Eric Garner, who was choked out by a police officer and later died in New York City for selling loose cigarettes on the street, bans and restrictions that create illegal markets can lead to devastating consequences.
If a law bans menthol and flavored tobacco products, the demand wouldn’t disappear.

Rather, it would be pushed into the unregulated market, siphoning away tobacco taxes and incenting police officers to use their power to enforce laws in minority communities.

Age-restriction by law is a powerful means of dissuading youth use

By penalizing convenience retailers that sell to minors, regulators have already created a significant barrier to youth access.

This allows law enforcement to prosecute bad actors and focus their efforts on illicit markets where dealers don’t ask for ID.

Recently, Congress’ raising of the age to purchase tobacco and vaping products to 21 years old also dissuades youth use, ensuring no high schooler will be able to legally purchase these products.

Nearly half of tobacco and vape shops don’t ID young customers.

Enforcing existing laws on youth access, including prosecuting shops that don’t check ID, are a powerful means of keeping youth away from tobacco products.

Bans Deny the Science on Harm Reduction by Vaping and Smokeless Products

For many adult smokers looking to quit, vaping products have been proven key to harm reduction.

About 4.4% of adults, nearly 11 million, are now using vaping devices

National health bodies around the world, including Public Health England, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and Health Canada have endorsed vaping as a smoking cessation method.

The U.K.’s top health body has repeatedly said that vaping and e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than smoking.

Bans that include flavored vaping products would deprive adult smokers of a less harmful method of consuming nicotine

We all have an interest in eliminating the number of young people who take up smoking. But counterintuitive bans would make that goal harder, not easier to achieve.

And depriving adult consumers of harm reducing technologies like flavored vaping products will reserve the decades of public health successes.

Let’s hope our members of Congress consider these facts before they vote on H.R. 2339.

Download the full policy note here.