Vaping Needs To Be Boring
Responding to the British Medical Association’s report, Dr Lion Shahab says that vaping needs to be made “boring again” by restricting flavours
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by Dave Cross
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Dr Lion Shahab is Professor of Health Psychology at University College London and past President for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He has led or worked on many excellent pieces of vape related research, making him a true expert in the field. Troublingly, when responding to the British Medical Association’s report, Dr Shahab says that vaping needs to be made “boring again”.
Speaking to the BMA’s report, Professor Shahab said: “The BMA report highlights the need for action to curb unnecessary use of vapes by youth, which may result in addiction. The report makes a number of sensible recommendations, including restrictions on marketing to youth, standardised packaging, point-of-sale display bans and tackling the illegal sale of vapes. However, in order to improve population health as a whole, it is also important to acknowledge the role that e-cigarettes have played in reducing smoking prevalence in the UK, which stands at a record low. To that end, legislation to protect youth has to be balanced with the need to support smokers to quit, including with e-cigarettes.”
The trouble with this statement is that no research shows teens buy vapes because of the packaging; equating vapes with tobacco products in this way makes no logical sense.
“Research has shown that flavours are important to adults switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes, not just to youth; and an outright flavour ban may drive up cigarette use as has been shown in the US where such bans have been implemented” – Professor Lion Shahab
Getting back on track, he continues: “In this context, some of the proposed recommendations by the BMA are likely to have unintended consequences. For instance, research has shown that flavours are important to adults switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes, not just to youth; and an outright flavour ban may drive up cigarette use as has been shown in the US where such bans have been implemented. Banning product categories, such as disposable vapes, outright may have intuitive appeal but ignores the fact that most users of disposable vapes in the UK are either past or current smokers. In addition, such action may propagate the message that e-cigarettes are as (or even more) harmful than cigarettes – this is not true but is widely believed by the public, even among those who would benefit from switching, in particular smokers who have failed to stop with other means.”
This statement will be roundly applauded by tobacco harm reduction advocates.
“There is no question that never-smoking youth should not be using vapes. For the longest time, the UK seemed to strike the right balance: encouraging smokers who were struggling to quit smoking to use e-cigarettes as a means of harm reduction while use of vapes among youth who were never smokers remained low. E-cigarettes were seen as a helpful smoking cessation aid, mainly used by adult smokers. We must get back to this state. We need to reduce the appeal of vapes (and other nicotine products such as nicotine pouches) to youth, by changing the marketing and packaging of products, by limiting (though not eliminating) flavours and standardising flavour descriptors, by moving products out of sight from counter tops and increasing taxation on them (though not beyond combustible tobacco products), in particular those popular with youth, and by reducing access to illicit products and having clear public health messaging that e-cigarettes are for smokers to help them stop smoking.”
Do we need to reduce the appeal of vapes? If we accept that some teens will always experiment, isn’t it good that teen smoking rates are now at a record low – in large part due to the role vaping is playing for them?
But it is in his final statement where he makes some troubling comments: “In short, we have to make vaping boring again, but we must be mindful that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. E-cigarettes, as part of a comprehensive tobacco control strategy that includes funding for smoking cessation services, provision of behavioural and pharmacological support to smokers and public health campaigns, have a crucial role to play in reducing smoking prevalence to achieve the government smokefree target of 5% by 2030. Proposed recommendations to curb youth use of vapes should focus on those evidence-based measures that do not also discourage harm reduction by smokers who struggle to quit that most dangerous of products: combustible cigarettes.”
How can vaping be made “boring again” when it was never boring. Those long in the tooth ex-smokers will remember the early days of Planet of the Vapes: it was a hotbed of ideas, experimentation and product development – we were the industry, we were the vanguard. Quitting smoking worked precisely because it was exciting, just count up the number of online forums dedicated to traditional nicotine replacement products!
Flavours exist because we wanted them, we designed them, we produced them, and we use them. Vaping continues to work because a) it mimics smoking and b) it is customisable to the individual’s tastes. The second you remove one of those aspects or make vaping appear as dangerous as smoking you lose – society loses.
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave 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.
