Fighting the Good Fight on World Vape Day

Vaping and other tobacco harm reduction (THR) products have improved the health of millions of people by helping them stop smoking traditional cigarettes.  On World Vape Day, May 30, 2025, supporters of THR should use this occasion to continue this momentum and fight against the barriers that restrict access to such products.

THR products have been proven to be a less dangerous alternative to smoking.  According to the American Lung Association, cigarettes contain more than 6,000 ingredients and release more than 7,000 chemicals.  Scientists and health officials agree that smoking is extremely harmful and causes conditions like heart disease, cancer, lung disease, and diabetes.  Vaping and other THR products release nicotine without the harmful ingredients and chemicals, like tar, arsenic, and lead that are contained in some cigarettes.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), smoking leads to more than 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S., which is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.

THR products effectively help smokers stop using harmful products like cigarettes and cigars, and countries that adopt policies that encourage that transition have reduced their smoking rates.  In Japan, which has embraced the use of THR and heat-not-burn products, sales of conventional cigarettes dropped by 43 percent, from $43.6 billion in 2016 to $25 billion by 2021.  Sweden, which has also encouraged the use of THR products, has a smoking rate of 5 percent, the lowest in Europe.

Despite their demonstrated health benefits, there have been efforts across the U.S. and abroad to restrict the use of vaping and other THR products.  California, Massachusetts, New York, and the District of Columbia have adopted flavor bans on any product containing nicotine.  Other states have enacted significant excise taxes on vaping products and some states, including South Carolina, and Virginia have passed legislation that would ban the sale of any vapor products that have not received a pre-market authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.  Policies like these make it harder for smokers to transition away from conventional cigarettes by restricting their access to THR products and making them too costly.  These policies are also likely to prop up unregulated black markets and fail to provide the projected increase in revenue from the higher taxes or reduce the number of smokers.

Vaping and other THR products have proven to be an effective way for smokers to ditch their habit of smoking conventional cigarettes.  In countries that have encouraged the use of vaping and THR products, smoking rates have consistently declined and led to a healthier population.

Despite strong evidence of success, some states and countries have engaged in fear-mongering and enacted policies that would reduce access to THR products.  On World Vape Day, supporters of using THR products to reduce smoking should double down on the success of these policies and continue to fight the good fight to reduce smoking.