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Background

This Buzzfeed article asserts that there is a realistic worry that vaping bans cause vapers to return back to cigarettes:

And yanking nicotine e-cigarettes off the market could have health consequences of its own. Ex-smokers who used them to quit may return to tobacco, which smoking experts fear would threaten a decade of progress in reducing smoking rates. Kids now addicted to nicotine because of vaping might turn to cigarettes. Cigarettes are linked to more than 480,000 US deaths yearly; by some estimates, 6.6 million premature deaths could be avoided over the next decade if smokers converted to e-cigarettes.

In addition to the above statement, Ned Sharpless, the acting FDA commissioner, stated this about the risks of vaping bans:

While denouncing e-cigarettes as dangerous, Ned Sharpless, the acting FDA commissioner, also expressed worries about the unintended effects of a wholesale vaping ban. “We are also quite concerned about people going back to [tobacco] cigarettes,” he told Congress on Wednesday.

There seems to be a public concern about the alternatives that vapers will seek in the face of a vaping ban. But the article's usage of "smoking experts fear" and Comissioner Sharpless' usage of the work "quite concerned" caused me to express skepticism over this concern. This led me to ask the question...

Question

Do vaping bans cause vapers to adaopt cigarettes as an alternative?

isakbob
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  • A counter question could be is it worse to keep having new generations become addicted to vaping and the issues with that or have some of the current vaping users turn to cigarettes. Sure that might be an immediate problem but what about longer term ones. – Joe W Oct 17 '19 at 17:29
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    The bans are so recent that the question basically asks what _will_ happen. Who knows? It's too early for this. – Jan Oct 17 '19 at 17:41
  • @Jan, what is a reasonable time period to know? – isakbob Oct 17 '19 at 17:43
  • I don't know, but probably at least few months. I guess, someone would need to research if vaping devices sales are decreasing and if cigarettes sales are increasing. – Jan Oct 17 '19 at 17:47
  • I would predict the response is likely to be some but not all. If that were the case, would you want an answer which said "Yes, some go back to smoking real cigarettes" or "No, not everybody goes back to smoking real cigarettes" ? – Henry Oct 17 '19 at 18:06
  • @Henry So the wording of my question states cause (which means it could be a strong, weak, major, minor or no cause/it's actually a correlation) as well as "people" in general. Given the wording, I think most answers would fall under "Yes, some go back to smoking real cigarettes". The only time where a "No" would make sense would be if "No, it is proven to NOT be a cause". – isakbob Oct 17 '19 at 18:19
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    Both quotes talk of "going back to cigarettes", implying that the vapers were using vaping to kick cigarettes. The first quote does also refer to younger people who started out vaping switching to cigarettes, but this is secondary. And, given that "vaping bans", if they have been implemented at all, have only been in effect for maybe 3 months, there has been no time to produce any sort of rigorous "study'. The speculation of experts is all that there is. – Daniel R Hicks Oct 17 '19 at 22:29
  • @isakbob 2/3 of the quoted statements are referring to former cigarette smokers returning to cigarettes. Can you clarify the question to say if you mean new smoking vapers in particular (as in the second half of quote 1)? – piojo Oct 18 '19 at 02:25
  • If vapers go for cigarettes to quit vaping then I would say that vape ban would easily rush vapers for nicotine in smoke form. – SZCZERZO KŁY Oct 21 '19 at 11:38
  • There is some good quality evidence that vaping is the best way to help smokers quit. That suggests that a ban on vaping *could* increase the number of smokers. But the situation seems to differ among countries. The USA has had very weak regulation of vaping content, dose and advertising; the UK has tight regulation. This lowers the number of teen vapers and increases the proportion of smoking quitters. so the results might differ by country. – matt_black Oct 22 '19 at 20:28

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