The Impact of the New Jersey Flavour Ban

New Jersey implemented a complete ban on the sale of flavoured vapes and eliquids on April 20, 2020. The team looked at how this prohibition act impacted on sales of vapes, cigarettes and cigars and compared sales prior to and following the law to ban.

The team obtained data from biweekly retailer scanner sales in New Jersey convenience stores for e-cigarettes, cigarettes, and cigars between August 2019 and December 2020.

The authors state: “We used Joinpoint regression to assess sales trends for cigarettes (non-menthol, menthol), cigars (unflavoured, flavoured), and e-cigarettes (unflavoured, fruit/sweet/concept flavour, menthol flavour) in the 36 weeks before and 36 weeks after a statewide ban on flavoured e-cigarettes.”

The results showed that flavoured vape sales other than menthol “significantly decreased over the study period while menthol e-cigarette sales significantly increased until the e-cigarette flavour ban took effect”.

Following the ban, sales declined rapidly up to May 2020 and then the rate of decline slowed.

Flavourless vape sales continued to decline up to September 2019 and then began to increase slowly. Following the ban, the authors say sales significantly increased.

Flavoured cigar sales increased up to May 2020 but then fell away. Non-flavoured cigar sales continued to increase in sales up to July 2020, then fell away.

Cigarette sales were falling away up to the flavour ban – at which point sales soared.

The researchers concluded: “Flavoured e-cigarette sales were declining prior to the ban but the pace of the decline accelerated following federal and state restrictions on flavoured e-cigarette sales, then slowed by the second half of 2020, with a brief period of increased cigarette and cigar sales immediately following the ban.”

This is the third paper Planet of the Vapes has considered this week that shows a link between eliquid flavour bans and a resulting increase in smoking rates/tobacco sales.

If you would like to write to your MP about how important flavours were to your quitting smoking:

• The various government websites are currently being updated with details of the new MPs. Keep checking this one so you can write directly to yours: https://www.writetothem.com/?a=westminstermp
• Also, you can write to Wes Streeting at the Department for Health at the following address - Ministerial Correspondence and Public Enquiries Unit, Department of Health and Social Care, 39 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0EU
• You can send an email to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care here: [email protected].         

References:

• The Impact of New Jersey’s 2020 E-Cigarette Flavour Ban on E-Cigarette, Cigarette, and Cigar Sales in NJ - https://academic.oup.com/ntr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ntr/ntae151/7697906

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

View Articles

Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.