The sweet-tasting allure of the vape

With flavours such as cherry cola, green gummy bear and cotton candy, bright packaging, and names such as Elf Bar and Lost Mary, vapes exert a powerful pull on teenage tastes. Many are attracted by videos on TikTok. Underage use of e-cigarettes is soaring in the UK and some other countries, opening the danger of a new generation becoming hooked on nicotine. Yet research does point to vapes being safer, overall, than cigarettes, and they are a useful aid to adults in giving up smoking. The balancing act for public authorities is this: how do you prevent vapes becoming a path to nicotine addiction for teens, but keep them available as a path away from cigarette addiction for smokers?

Vapes are still relatively new products, and their long-term effects on health are unclear. Evidence suggests their vapour can contain substances that can cause lung disease, heart disease and cancer, though in far smaller quantities than cigarette smoke. Nicotine can harm brain development in young people, and lead to mood and attention disorders. Research in animals suggests early exposure to nicotine might make users more susceptible to addictive substances — including tobacco — later on. Studies indicate, however, that smokers find them a lot more helpful in quitting smoking than nicotine gum or patches.

The US had its own panic over an underage “vaping epidemic” in 2018, fuelled by an earlier generation of products dominated by Juul and its sleek, flash drive-style devices using replaceable flavoured “pods”. US regulators cracked down, and in 2020 president Donald Trump banned most flavoured vape pods and cartridges. Regulatory pressures and legal cases alleging it marketed products to minors have shrunk Juul to a shadow of its former self.

But the US clampdown spurred development of a new wave of single-use, disposable vapes, many Chinese-made. Their use is now surging, notably across the Atlantic. A study last month in north-west England found one in seven schoolchildren aged 14-17 were regularly vaping, up from just 6 per cent three years earlier. The UK government has championed vaping as an aid to quitting smoking, but is now consulting on curbing underage use.

Banning vapes is one route, and several dozen countries including Australia (except for products on prescription), India and Mexico have done so. Yet barring even just fruit-flavoured vapes risks pushing people back to smoking tobacco or illicit or smuggled vaping products. The industry has published research suggesting vapes’ pleasant flavours are an important tool in attracting adult smokers to switch.

Vapes are subject to certain safety rules and most advertising and sale to minors is banned in the UK and many European countries. But as products containing nicotine that can cause harm there is a strong case for subjecting them to similar plain packaging and point-of-sale restrictions as cigarettes. They would leave them still available to adults, and governments and healthcare bodies could conduct targeted information campaigns. Given the role of often user-generated content on social media, however, controlling marketing of vapes to the underage is trickier than in the era of Big Tobacco.

Taxation also has a role to play. Even a relatively small tax on vapes could make them hard for children to afford, but still accessible to adults; the EU is working on plans for a bloc-wide minimum excise duty. As with some other adult-orientated products such as alcohol whose potential harms are manageable, access to vapes ought to be preserved for those who wish to partake. But there is more to be done to shield vulnerable young minds from their sweet-tasting allure.