Vaping Restrictions: Is Priority to the Young Justified?

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Magalhaes M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7789938 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature