The Food and Drug Administration has been particularly resistant to approving the sale of vaping products that are not flavored like cigarettes. The vast majority of the vaping products approved to date have been tobacco flavored. A small handful, approved more recently, have been menthol flavored. The thousands of marketing applications for products with other flavors have been denied. Thus, there are no FDA-permitted vaping products on the market that provide consumers with a flavor different from that provided by cigarettes.
There is a growing body of evidence that restrictions on non-tobacco-flavored vaping products can increase smoking rates, including among youth. There is also growing evidence that non-tobacco-flavored vaping products may help smokers cut back on cigarette consumption or quit. Yet the FDA has shown little interest in this research, maintaining what appears to be a de facto ban on alternative vaping flavors.
A new peer-reviewed study in Addictive Behaviors provides additional evidence of that the availability of alternative flavors can help smokers reduce or cease their cigarette consumption. In this study, smokers were given vaping products with a choice of flavors with the aim of identifying "the impact of e-cigarette flavoring choice on e-cigarette uptake and changes in cigarette smoking." And what did it find?
