vape bans increase sales of cigarettes

Research published in science journal Value in Health has examined the impact of temporary bans on the sale of electronic cigarettes in the US.  The researchers discovered that the result was not the expected decrease in nicotine product use but in fact an increase in traditional tobacco sales.

In the autumn of 2019, several US states passed short-term bans on the sale of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) in response to an outbreak of illnesses strongly linked to tetrahydrocannabinol vaping products that received national news coverage. This study assessed how such state-level ENDS bans in 3 US states may have affected cigarette sales.

The researchers note that “Cigarette sales in states banning ENDS were significantly higher than would have been observed otherwise. A full ban on ENDS was associated with increased cigarette sales of 7.5% in Massachusetts. Banning non-tobacco flavoured ENDS was associated with a 4.6% increase in cigarette sales.”

This study provides new evidence that banning ENDS was associated with increased cigarette sales using commercial sales data. The authors of the study write that “results highlight and quantify potential unintended consequences of ENDS sale restrictions, which should be considered in the future as part of public health impact analyses of such policies” and that “Future research is needed to determine the long-term impact of these policies”.
 
"This study provides some of the first rigorous evidence of the impact of ENDS restrictions at a market level. Previous studies with discrete choice experiments have suggested that taking ENDS out of consumer choice sets may result in smoking relapse among adult smokers. Nevertheless, these estimates using experimental settings may be biased because they measure the potential impact of banning ENDS within a hypothetical scenario of unavailability, and these hypothetical choice scenarios are different from those of an equivalent realistic choice context. For instance, a real-world sales ban cannot prevent people from purchasing ENDS through either cross-border shopping or other unregulated channels. Our findings advance the literature by building on the expanding research and empirical evidence of the population-level consequences of ENDS bans on cigarette sales in a real-world setting."

Conclusions

This study provides novel evidence that banning ENDS was associated with increased cigarette sales, using state-level commercial sales data. The results highlight and quantify potential unintended consequences of ENDS sale restrictions, which should be considered in future policy deliberations on tobacco products. Additional research is also needed to investigate the impact on spatial spill over effects,42 illicit markets, and other scenarios that may arise in response to ENDS restrictions. Furthermore, the long-term impact of ENDS sales bans on ENDS and cigarette sales, as well as the distal public health outcomes, will need to be studied as additional data become available.

Source: https://www.valueinhealthjournal.com/article/S1098-3015(22)00008-0/fulltext