Marketing vaping to teens cries out for regulation

Can it ever be good to inhale something that says it is “cupcake” or “root beer” flavoured? (We use quotation marks because these vaping flavours have nothing, of course, to do with real cupcakes or root beer.)

Vaping is the use of so-called e-cigarettes or vaping pens, which heat a liquid or crystals to vapour form that is then inhaled by the user. Users can buy the liquid in any of hundreds of flavours, from the abovementioned cupcake to simulated tobacco. Some vaping liquids contain nicotine. There’s evidence — anecdotal and scientific — that vaping helps smokers kick the (real) tobacco habit. That’s a good thing.

But no vaping manufacturer is marketing cupcake or candy flavours to adults. That’s a direct pitch to the youth market. That is very concerning, particularly since the youth vaping market is booming.

Just this month, a study by the Rand Corporation in the U.S. concluded from a study of more than 2,000 young Californians over three years that teenagers who use vaping products are more likely to smoke cigarettes. In fact, the report said e-cigarettes were

“the sole factor” driving up teen use of tobacco, far more so than alcohol or marijuana use.

The study adds weight to a theory that doctors have been warning of for years: for teenagers, vaping may be a gateway to smoking, rather than a safer alternative.

Now, the Ontario government has paused regulations from the previous Liberal government that would have banned advertising of vaping products in convenience stores. That has health groups worried that nicotine addiction among teenagers will increase.

It’s a valid concern. While nicotine in vaping liquid may help established smokers quit tobacco, its corollary is that the addictive ingredient may hook young people and lead them into smoking. Health Canada says exposure to nicotine adversely affects cognitive function in adolescents’ brains. Its addictive properties, as smokers can attest, can last a lifetime.

As well, as we noted earlier, there should be concern that the “flavours” being marketed particularly to young people are entirely chemical concoctions. We shouldn’t wait to find out in studies years hence that the inhaled chemicals that produce a taste like cupcakes or root beer, for example, are unhealthy. (It is also worth noting that flavoured cigarettes — including popular menthol brands — were banned not long ago because of their appeal to young “entry-level” smokers.)

Electronic cigarettes and vaping are not all bad. If the practice helps smokers quit tobacco, more power to it. But the marketing and availability to the youth market must be controlled. An outright ban on youth vaping may be counterproductive: many young people smoke tobacco now and may benefit from a switch to vaping.

But governments — federal and provincial — should co-ordinate on a strategy that eliminates the obvious marketing pitches to young people (including, perhaps, a ban on flavours); that attempts to reduce vaping to a therapeutic alternative or cessation practice for smokers; and that educates users, of any age, to the health and addiction perils of vaping.

Vaping is not a risk-free practice, and government watchfulness and regulation is both appropriate and needed.

While nicotine in vaping liquid may help established smokers quit tobacco, the addictive ingredient may hook young people and lead them into smoking.