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NEW HAVEN, CT — When San Francisco voters overwhelmingly authorized a poll measure banning the sale of flavored tobacco merchandise in 2018, public well being advocates celebrated. In any case, tobacco use poses a major risk to public well being and well being fairness, and flavors are significantly engaging to youth.
However in keeping with a brand new research from the Yale College of Public Well being (YSPH), that legislation could have had the alternative impact. Analyses discovered that, after the ban’s implementation, highschool college students’ odds of smoking typical cigarettes doubled in San Francisco’s faculty district relative to developments in districts with out the ban, even when adjusting for particular person demographics and different tobacco insurance policies.
The research, revealed in JAMA Pediatrics on Might 24, is believed to be the primary to evaluate how full taste bans have an effect on youth smoking habits.
“These findings suggest a need for caution,” stated Abigail Friedman, the research’s writer and an assistant professor of well being coverage at YSPH. “While neither smoking cigarettes nor vaping nicotine are safe per se, the bulk of current evidence indicates substantially greater harms from smoking, which is responsible for nearly one in five adult deaths annually. Even if it is well-intentioned, a law that increases youth smoking could pose a threat to public health.”
Friedman used knowledge on highschool college students underneath 18 years of age from the Youth Danger Conduct Surveillance System’s 2011-2019 faculty district surveys. Previous to the ban’s implementation, past-30-day smoking charges in San Francisco and the comparability faculty districts have been comparable and declining. But as soon as the flavour ban was totally carried out in 2019, San Francisco’s smoking charges diverged from developments noticed elsewhere, growing because the comparability districts’ charges continued to fall.
To elucidate these outcomes, Friedman famous that digital nicotine supply programs have been the most well-liked tobacco product amongst U.S. youth since at the least 2014, with flavored choices largely most well-liked.
“Think about youth preferences: some kids who vape choose e-cigarettes over combustible tobacco products because of the flavors,” she stated. “For these individuals as well as would-be vapers with similar preferences, banning flavors may remove their primary motivation for choosing vaping over smoking, pushing some of them back toward conventional cigarettes.”
These findings have implications for Connecticut, the place the state legislature is at present contemplating two taste payments: Home Invoice 6450 would ban gross sales of flavored digital nicotine supply programs, whereas Senate Invoice 326 would ban gross sales of any flavored tobacco product. Because the U.S. Meals and Drug Administration just lately introduced that it’s going to ban flavors in all flamable tobacco merchandise inside the subsequent 12 months, each payments might end in a Connecticut coverage that’s just like the entire ban enacted in San Francisco.
The San Francisco research does have limitations. As a result of there was solely a short while for the reason that ban was carried out, the development could differ in coming years. San Francisco can be simply one among a number of localities and states which have carried out restrictions on flavored tobacco gross sales, with in depth variations between these legal guidelines. Thus, results could differ elsewhere, Friedman wrote.
Nonetheless, as comparable restrictions proceed to look throughout the nation, the findings recommend that policymakers needs to be cautious to not not directly push minors towards cigarettes of their quest to cut back vaping, she stated.
What does she recommend instead? “If Connecticut is determined to make a change before the FDA’s flavor ban for combustible products goes into effect, a good candidate might be restricting all tobacco product sales to adult-only — that is 21-plus — retailers,” she stated. “This would substantively reduce children’s incidental exposure to tobacco products at convenience stores and gas stations, and adolescents’ access to them, without increasing incentives to choose more lethal combustible products over non-combustible options like e-cigarettes.”
