About 2 in 3 Voters Back FDA Bans on Tobacco-Flavored Vapes

About 2 in 3 voters are on board with Food and Drug Administration bans on tobacco-flavored vaping products, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey that comes after the agency’s decision to order such products from Juul Labs Inc. off the U.S. market.

Voters largely in favor of vape bans

• Last week, the FDA banned Juul from selling any of its vaping products in the United States, including tobacco-flavored cartridges, citing insufficient health and safety data. After being told about the move, 65% of voters said they were in favor of bans on tobacco-flavored vape products, with majority support across political divides. Older voters were more supportive of bans than younger voters, as were more highly educated voters.
• Notably, 50% of voters who regularly vape and 55% of cigarette smokers said they support FDA bans on tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes, as did 70% of voters who don’t smoke or vape. There’s overlap between the groups who light up, with 42% of smokers saying they also vape and 69% of vapers saying they also smoke cigarettes.
• It will be some time before Juul’s products — which once made up 76% of e-cigarette sales at U.S. convenience stores — are actually off the shelves. An appeals court temporarily froze the FDA ban last week, teeing up a long legal battle over the vaping giant’s future.
• The ban reflects a departure from the FDA’s approach to other big e-cigarette manufacturers, which have been allowed to keep tobacco-flavored products on the market. And it comes three months before the first youth marketing case against Juul is set to begin in San Francisco federal court.
• Over the weekend, 56% of voters said they had seen, read or heard at least something about the FDA’s Juul ban, though a quarter said they’d heard nothing at all about it.

The June 24-26, 2022, survey was conducted among a representative sample of 2,004 registered voters, with an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.