E-cigarette bans may keep more people smoking tobacco

Measures to ban e-cigarettes, intended to prevent teen vaping, could make it tougher for tobacco smokers to quit, two experts argue.

E-cigarettes have been at the center of a heated debate among policymakers, parents, and the public health community. San Francisco recently became the first US city to ban the sale of e-cigarettes.

On one hand, research shows that e-cigarettes are substantially safer than cigarettes, delivering nicotine through a vaporized mist rather than burning tobacco—which creates cancer-causing toxins.

On the other hand, a surge in youth vaping raises questions about teens getting hooked on nicotine and what the long-term health impact of e-cigarettes will be. But since vaping products have not been on the market long enough, health experts may not know the precise effects for decades.

David Abrams and Ray Niaura—both professors of social and behavioral sciences at the New York University College of Global Public Health and co-directors of the Tobacco Research Lab, coauthored a paper in 2017 in Tobacco Control that showed if most American smokers switched from cigarettes to vaping over the next 10 years, it could save as many as 6.6 million lives.

Here they discuss the potential ramifications of the San Francisco e-cigarette ban on public health.

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