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Roger Bate
There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments.
Non-combustible nicotine products—vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches—are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. At the same time, the political panic that once drove restrictive policy has subsided, with youth vaping falling sharply from its peak.
The most recent data show that around 5.2 percent of youth report e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, down dramatically from prior highs, and importantly only a subset of that group are frequent users, those using on 20 or more days in a month, the category most closely associated with dependence.
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