Despite the proven effectiveness of vaping in getting smokers to quit and it being 95 percent safer than smoking, many federal, state and local governments impose strict regulations on vaping products, making it more difficult for the millions of smokers in America to quit. These restrictions contribute to the hundreds of thousands of deaths annually that could be prevented if smokers could more easily quit. Laws imposing taxes, flavor restrictions and outright bans on vaping products prevent smokers from quitting by switching to less dangerous options, costing thousands of lives nationwide.
A recent study from the American Consumer Institute highlights the difference in deaths in each state under a model where vaping had completely replaced smoking. It finds that if all smokers had vaped instead of smoked, deaths from smoking-related diseases would drop by 300,000 yearly.
While we cannot change the past for smokers and former smokers, this study shows the potential deaths that could be prevented in a smoke-free future, assuming regulations do not deprive smokers of options to quit.
The study finds that in California, one of the states with the highest death toll due to smoking, more than 20,000 lives could have been spared from smoking-related deaths in 2019 had a full transition from smoking to vaping already occurred. More than 20,000 additional lives will be lost to smoking in 2024. From 2010 through 2024, more than 300,000 fewer Californians would have died had smoking been replaced by vaping. Nationwide, there would have been more than 4 million fewer deaths during that 15-year period.
Many people try to transition from smoking to vaping, but state and local regulations can get in their way, resulting in preventable deaths. Despite being third in the nation for smoking deaths in 2019, in 2022 California enacted a ban on any non-tobacco flavored vapes in all brick-and-mortar stores in the state. This moved California in the wrong direction in getting smokers to quit and will cost the lives of Californians for years to come.
Washington and Louisiana have imposed bans on flavored vapes, resulting in stores shutting down or moving out of state, denying smokers an option to quit.
This result is entirely predictable since it occurred when the Food and Drug Administration imposed flavor restrictions nationwide. In each case, the federal, state and municipal regulations slowed the transition away from smoking. The result is more deaths.
Vaping regulations in America take an opposite approach to reducing smoking than the efforts taken in the United Kingdom. The National Health Service in the UK promotes vaping for smokers to quit smoking for the health benefits to smokers and to reduce healthcare costs. This is because vaping is significantly less risky than smoking, resulting in fewer diseases that are deadly and expensive to treat.
The NHS reports vaping to be at most 5 percent as risky as smoking, and that vaping is effective in getting smokers to quit. In fact, some studies show that flavored vapes are more effective than non-flavored or tobacco-flavored vapes at getting people to quit smoking. If citizens’ health is their first concern, regulators in each state would be well advised to take a lesson on vaping regulations from the United Kingdom.
Panic over vaping as a gateway to smoking is misguided. Vaping is having the opposite effect on smoking rates than the panic suggests, to the benefit of former smokers’ health. Rates of successfully quitting smoking have increased over the past decade, in large part because of vaping. Additionally, the National Youth Tobacco Survey has shown vaping has not been a gateway to smoking for high-school students either.
Federal, state and municipal restrictions on adult use of vaping products make it more difficult for millions of smokers across the country to quit smoking, slowing the progress to a smoke-free future. Removing these barriers would reduce deaths caused by smoking-related diseases and help transition nicotine consumers to a healthier life by making it easier for them to quit. Legislators and regulators should focus on how to encourage smokers to switch to vaping, not on how to restrict access to the most useful tool smokers have to quit.
