The work was carried out by the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project, based in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.
The research team asked Canadian, English, and American regular vapers who only use non-tobacco flavoured e-cigarettes if they would support or oppose a ban on all non-tobacco flavours. They were also asked what they would do if a ban was ever enacted.
Professor Geoffrey Fong, co-author and the principal investigator of the ITC Project said: “Our study helps to fill the gaps in evidence of the possible impact of e-cigarette flavour bans, following from other studies that have predicted how smokers respond to tobacco control policies such as tax increases and menthol bans.”
Unfortunately, the drive to investigate the subject was not altogether positive. The team claims that the vaping industry produces thousands of flavoured vaping products, and links this to “rising rates of youth vaping”.
Independent data from both England and the United States demonstrates beyond doubt that the numbers of teens regularly vaping is very low, is confined to those who are or used to be smokers and is declining.
Despite this fact, they state that, “a ban on flavoured vaping products intends to discourage vaping among youth.”
In their favour, they did pose themselves some sensible questions: “It is not clear whether a flavour ban would also discourage vaping among adult smokers who vape, who also like flavours. However, it is unknown whether there could be unintended effects of a flavour ban. For example, could those who have used flavoured e-cigarettes to cut down or quit smoking risk relapsing to smoking if flavoured e-cigarettes are no longer available?”
From their work:
If e-liquid flavours were banned:
“Our findings raise the possibility that banning some flavoured vaping products may dissuade some adult smokers from vaping, with the possibility that they would return to smoking cigarettes, which are clearly much more harmful than vaping products, given that we know that at least half of regular smokers die of a smoking-caused disease,” said ITC research assistant professor Shannon Gravely, who was lead author of the study.
News from:https://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/news/vaping-news/2021-12-03_flavour-bans-increase-smoking.html