BREAKING: The UK government plans to ban disposable vapes, restrict e-cig flavours and introduce plain packaging for vape juice. Some sort of display ban seems to be on the cards too. Rishi Sunak will make an announcement at a school tomorrow. 🧵
The evidence is clear that banning e-cigarette flavours increases the sale of combustible cigarettes. A study from the USA found that "banning non-tobacco flavored ENDS was associated with a 4.6% increase in cigarette sales." valueinhealthjournal.com/article/S1098-…
Two studies have shown that the ban on flavoured vapes in San Francisco led to an increase in cigarette sales and an increase in the youth smoking rate. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…
Last week a study funded by Cancer Research UK concluded that a ban on disposable vapes "has the potential to slow progress in driving down smoking prevalence and reducing smoking-related harm". sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
None of the anti-vaping policies proposed by the government are evidence-based and they will likely lead to lead to more people smoking. It's all about short term politics.
The government has also confirmed it will go ahead with the ludicrous plan of gradually raising the smoking age (recently ditched in New Zealand). Laughably, it mentions the size of the tobacco black market as a justification for prohibition. 🤪 
The government seems intent in rushing all this through before anybody thinks about it too carefully. It hasn't even published its response to the public consultation yet.
More on this here. As usual with the BBC, the only opponents quoted are from industry and the article includes the classic line: “Some will argue the UK's plans still don't go far enough…” bbc.co.uk/news/uk-681232…
The Scottish nationalist take…
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