A large part of the concern over youth vaping is the impact nicotine has on the adolescent brain. And while vaping has been show to be less harmful than smoking, because it does not involve inhalation of smoke, both systems of delivery still expose youth to the effects of nicotine on the brain.

While the brain continues to develop to about the age of 25, nicotine has been found to harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood, and impulse control. The New England Journal of Medicine reported, as far back as 2010, that nicotine changes adolescents’ brain cell activity in the parts of the brain that are responsible for attention, learning, and memory. In more technical terms, nicotine has significant and immediate effects on the adolescent prefrontal cortical network of the brain. Because brain development has not yet ended in adolescents, this age group is susceptible to addiction after ingesting nicotine in periods as short as 1 to 2 days. This has not changed the findings of increasing studies reporting that banning flavored e-cigarette products is not in the best interest of adolescents. If those findings are accurate, what is driving the push for these bans? More and more studies are pointing at pharmaceutical industry incentives.

July 27, 2023 report from the National Library of Medicine (NLM)that medically assisted smoking cessation involves the use of a clinically approved approach to relieve nicotine withdrawal symptoms and reduce the cravings caused by nicotine addiction.

An earlier NHLM report, published in 2017, stated that in medical ethics, pharmaceuticalization is “the translation or transformation of human conditions, capabilities and capacities into opportunities for pharmaceutical intervention.” Applied to tobacco, the industry’s actual and perceived transition into a pharmaceutical-like industry through the manufacture and sale of noncombustible tobacco and nicotine products for smoking cessation or long-term nicotine maintenance has been pursued without the testing and oversight required of traditional pharmaceutical products.

Nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs), such as nicotine gum, patches, and lozenges, have long been used to assist smokers in quitting, the report states. However, e-cigarettes have emerged as an alternative to traditional NRTs, cutting deep gouges into pharmaceutical companies marketing NRTs.

A June, 2019 Politico article, titled Big Pharma battles Big Tobacco over smokers, reported that a study of global smoking trends by the Foundation for a Smoke Free World, a New York-based anti-smoking organization backed by the tobacco giant Philip Morris International, found sales of vapor-based smoking products rose nearly 37 percent in 2017. Sales of pharmaceutical nicotine products rose by only 2.5 percent.

The article went on to say that the drug industry is objecting to the marketing of e-cigarettes and vape pens as a way to quit cancer-causing cigarettes. On the opposite end of the argument is Big Tobacco.

As was reported in Feb. 2023 by STAT News, For the past few years, the tobacco industry has publicly endorsed what it calls “harm reduction.” The tobacco industry’s take on harm reduction, the report says, includes mass marketing nicotine-laden vaping products that flood retail outlets while furiously lobbying against the regulation of traditional cigarettes.

“This strategy could change,” the article states, “but for now, the companies’ embrace of e-cigarettes looks like a self-serving attempt at reinvention, not public health.”

The companies say their harm-reduction goal is to help adult smokers unable or unwilling to quit combustible tobacco products to transition to e-cigarettes. What they don’t say is that since global cigarette sales have fallen each year over the past decade, the industry needs new customers, the report continues. Hooking a new generation of youths to nicotine through vaping could do the trick. Thus, “harm reduction” offers a unique opportunity for both reinvention and profit.

Big Pharma is losing revenue

As far back as November. 2013, the Washington Examiner reported that the European Parliament considered new rules regulating e-cigs. E-cigarette manufacturers, of course, lobbied like crazy to block the proposal, and it seems they won. But the drugmakers fought for stricter regulations, for obvious reasons: E-cigarettes compete with prescription drugs that are supposed to help people stop smoking.

GlaxoSmithKline sells Nicorette gum and Johnson & Johnson manufactures nicotine patches, the Examiner reported. The New York Times reported these companies helped lead “strong opposition” to e-cigarettes.

“Big Pharma is the real foe of e-cigs,” stated the Examiner, “and Big Government is their weapon of choice — on both sides of the pond.”

While the battle between Big Pharma and Big Tobacco continues in Congressional chambers across the country, neither special interest group, or the legislators they fund seem to be maintaining the focus of the real issue: Youth nicotine addiction and how to come to terms with it.

Nicotine, like alcohol, is an addictive substance. Banning e-cigarette flavors will not stop youth from being addicted to nicotine. On the contrary, studies have shown that such policies push youth to combustible tobacco products. Policies to restrict tobacco use by means of increased taxation, stiffer regulations, placing health warnings on packaging — these have all failed. As the National Institute on Drug Abuse stated in 2021, merely educating potential smokers about the health risks has not proven effective.

Successful evidence-based interventions that aim to reduce or delay initiation of smoking, alcohol use, and illicit drug use, and otherwise improve outcomes for children and teens by reducing or mitigating modifiable risk factors and bolstering protective factors, have greater likelihood at succeeding.

If an estimated 24.8% of surveyed high school seniors reported any nicotine use in a 30-day period in 2021, those same statistics reveal that 75.2% of the same demographic did not use nicotine. The question is not whether higher taxes and bans and restrictions will suddenly cure nicotine addiction; it becomes one of what can be learned from the vast majority of students who did not use nicotine to teach to the 25% who do.