Member-only story
These bans on flavored e-cigarettes could do more harm than good.
Something very curious is happening as anti-tobacco groups led by the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids seek city-by-city, state-by-state bans on flavored tobacco products.
They have succeeded in just one state — Massachusetts, which ended the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, e-cigarettes and cigars, last June. In a full-page ad in The Boston Globe, the anti-tobacco groups thanked lawmakers “for protecting our kids and communities.”
And yet. Sales tax data shows that as cigarette sales declined in Massachusetts, they grew in neighboring states — an early indication that the bans may not be reducing tobacco consumption.
Elsewhere, what began as campaigns against all flavored tobacco products — the menthol cigarettes that kill smokers, the flavored cigars that are popular with young Black people and the flavored electronic cigarettes that have provoked alarm among middle-class parents — evolved into something entirely different.
New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the cities of Chicago and San Francisco passed laws that banned flavored e-cigarettes and left combustible tobacco untouched.
This is exactly wrong, many public health experts say. NY, NJ, RI, Chicago and San Francisco left the most…
