Open AccessVaping Restrictions: Is Priority to the Young Justified?
Author(s) -
Monica Magalhães
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
nicotine and tobacco research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.338
H-Index - 113
eISSN - 1469-994X
pISSN - 1462-2203
DOI - 10.1093/ntr/ntaa175
Subject(s) - harm , harm reduction , dilemma , ethical dilemma , young adult , public health , tobacco harm reduction , bioethics , psychology , business , political science , medicine , criminology , public relations , social psychology , tobacco control , law , developmental psychology , philosophy , nursing , epistemology
The vast majority of smokers become dependent on nicotine in youth. Preventing dependence has therefore been crucial to the recent decline in youth smoking. The advent of vaping creates an opportunity for harm reduction to existing smokers (mostly adults) but simultaneously also undermines prevention efforts by becoming a new vehicle for young people to become dependent on nicotine, creating an ethical dilemma. Restrictions to access to some vaping products enacted in response to the increase in vaping among youth observed in the United States since 2018 have arguably prioritized prevention of new cases of dependence-protecting the young-over harm reduction to already dependent adults. Can this prioritization of the young be justified? This article surveys the main bioethical arguments for prioritizing giving health benefits to the young and finds that none can justify prioritizing dependence prevention over harm reduction: any reasons for prioritizing the current cohort of young people at risk from vaping will equally apply to current adult smokers, who are overwhelmingly likely to have become nicotine-dependent in their own youth. Public health authorities' current tendency to prioritize the young, therefore, does not seem to be ethically justified.