Study finds flavor bans cut youth vaping but slow decline in cigarette smoking

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-07-flavor-youth-vaping-decline-cigarette.html

by PaulHoule • 12 months ago

24 31 12 months ago

I was at a music festival last weekend and there were all sorts of vendors there, including Zyn. Obviously, those aren't vapes or cigarettes, but they're another nicotine product.

No one was interested in their booth.

That made me happy.

ge962• 12 months ago

I'm just fortunate it makes me nauseous, I tried to get into smoking when I was in school thinking it would help me concentrate. I was able to source the adderall but was expensive/tolerance.

The electronics in vaping tech is nuts though

jaian2• 12 months ago

Cigarettes are disgusting when you begin smoking them, but later they get really really good

tekno45• 12 months ago

is it? its just an atomizer and heating coil. Any good reading on the tech you find interesting?

andrewla3• 12 months ago

I have two elementary school age boys, and one day I complained about someone who was vaping and they solemnly informed me that vaping was more deadly than smoking. This is what they had learned in school; the anti-vaping hype was so aggressive that it had gone to the point and then right past it.

If you're going to use a nicotine product, please vape. Also don't vape. But smoking is so much worse that they're not in the same league.

tornadofart• 12 months ago

Dose for dose, sure. OTOH vaping does tend to increase nicotine consumption because it doesn't taste as bad as the alternative, or so I have read...

temp08263• 12 months ago

It's complex, other compounds in tobacco do potentiate the effects but (as an ex-smoker, n=1) I never found even the high-octane gas station vapes to be as satisfying (felt like a completely different experience). And the taste is definitely subjective (I know people who say the dirtier the better)- I definitely prefer a good tobacco to any vape, flavored or unflavored. (Oh how I miss it sometimes...why do we love things that want to kill us?)

andrewla3• 12 months ago

My understanding of cigarettes is that while nicotine is responsible for the addictive effects of tobacco, it is a very minor contributor to the overall health impact of smoking, which are mostly the other tobacco ingredients, primarily particulates.

So while you may consume more nicotine, which has some deleterious effects, the overall risk is literally orders of magnitude lower. You'd need to consume 100s of vapes to get enough nicotine to have health risks on par with what you get from a cigarette.

darth_avocado• 12 months ago

If you vaped the same amount as a cigarette then yes. Unfortunately vapes get you to vape way more. On top of that Social norms around cigarettes create barriers for smoking that don’t exist for vaping. Somehow smoking a cigarette indoors is extremely frowned upon but you could be sitting on a couch vaping all day and no one will bat an eye. The fact that you have to physically go outside to smoke is a sufficient enough barrier to reduce consumption.

extraduder_ire• 12 months ago

At least where I am, vaping indoors is exactly as illegal as smoking indoors. Though, amending the law to include vaping took years.

andrewla3• 12 months ago

I don't think this is even remotely true. It is literally an order of magnitude question.

Don't vape!

But your risk of lung cancer / emphysema is close to nil with vapes. Other risks related to nicotine exposure are of course present, as are the risk of tainted vapes or bad ingredients, but they're really not in the same ballpark.

prophesi3• 12 months ago

I will also add to the discussion that disposable vapes (in the USA) tend to be outrageously high in their nicotine content. If you buy the juice yourself you have options to choose much lower nicotine per volume compared to these disposables (and will be a lot cheaper in the mid-term/long-term). A lot of devices these days curb the issue of replacing your own coils too, as that used to be a common issue.

But please don't start vaping if you don't already smoke. There's also the discussion of tobacco-less nicotine pouches that have hit the scene; on average they have higher nicotine content than regular tobacco pouches. And the same issue applies, as it's also acceptable to partake of them anywhere at anytime.

kimbernator3• 12 months ago

What's the common understanding of nicotine these days? I haven't thought about this much since the early e-cigarette days around 2011, but back then the common discourse was that 1. It's really hard to measure nicotine in a cigarette in a comparable unit to vaping due to the difference in how they are consumed, and 2. Nicotine itself isn't particularly harmful, and its addictiveness is dramatically accelerated by the other things in cigarettes.

Anecdotally, I vaped (at what might be considered a high amount of nicotine) for years and basically just decided it wasn't for me one day and stopped without any drama.

Given that vaping has come a long way since then I'm certain there is a more modern understanding of these things.

kimbernator3• 12 months ago

I can't stand that this thought has permeated as much as it has. The magnitude is entirely different, and when I try to make that point I'm always seen as pro-vaping. The fact that barely any kids are smoking is a bigger deal than the fact that more of them are vaping. The vaping is still a problem, but it's a huge success that we've come so far from the problem it replaced.

unparagoned• 12 months ago

In some aspects it might be worse. Temperatures are much higher which have their own risks. Plus you have the danger relating to the chemicals in akin to popcorn lung.

ofrzeta• 12 months ago

I guess vaping is better than smoking for your health but then I see vast amounts of vaping products in supermarkets and gas stations and imagine the piles of all that plastic garbage including batteries and get a little depressed. Is this really the kind of progress we want?

Study finds flavor bans cut youth vaping but slow decline in cigarette smoking

Related Stories