Pictured are Prue Talbot (left) and Man Wong.
Vaping shouldn’t be fun in New York state.
That’s the basic gist of a new piece of legislation introduced recently by Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, D-New York City. A.10713 would amend the state Public Health Law to prohibit the sale of what Rosenthal terms entertainment vapor products.
Last year vaping devices began coming with a digital screen that showed how long the battery in the device would last. Within a few months the digital screens began coming with pre-packaged video games – an addition that has caught the attention of two professors at the University of California at Riverside.
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“Our lab is constantly monitoring the electronic cigarette market for new devices, especially ones that target youth and young adults,” said Man Wong, first author of the paper and an assistant in the lab of Prue Talbot, a professor of the university’s graduate division. “One of these devices, Craftbox V-Play, can run Pac-Man, Tetris, and F22 — classic arcade games. Other devices that we found alarming were vapes that had digital games that encourage users to vape, vapes with animations that change as users puff, vapes that have built-in bluetooth and can be customized with personal photos, and vapes with celebrity endorsements that offer promotional trading cards.”
Talbot and Wong believe the new devices need to be closely monitored and regulated. They report that unlike prior versions of electronic cigarettes, smart vapes prey on three potential addictions: nicotine dependence, gaming disorder, and screen time obsession. Talbot and Wong hope their research will encourage the Food and Drug Administration and other government agencies to regulate the sales of these devices.
Because the products are user friendly and attractive to youth, they may couple nicotine addiction with gaming disorder, the researchers caution.
Of particular concern to the researchers is that coupling nicotine to existing youth behaviors, such as video gaming and screen time use, could broaden the smart electronic cigarette market to include youth with no prior interest in nicotine products, while also reinforcing nicotine addiction among current users.
Rosenthal agrees. The New York City assemblywoman wants New York state to act quickly to ban the sale of the devices before they gain a significant foothold in New York. The bill could be discussed during next year’s state legislative session.
“Big tobacco’s newest trick to attract a new generation of customers is the sale of “entertainment vapor products,” e-cigarettes that include “fun” and trendy features like Bluetooth, internet connectivity, digital screens to display photos and animations and virtual games to play directly on the device,” Rosenthal wrote in her legislative justification. “These products draw users in with their features and encourage them to continue. vaping by “gamifying” the experience and offering rewards to those who continue using the product. Just as New York state banned vapor products that appeal to children through flavors and flashy marketing, it is time to provide the same protection against products that aim to combine vaping with the features of a video game or smartphone. This legislation would prohibit the sale of entertainment vapor products in the state and establish civil penalties for any retailers found to be in violation.”
The latest form of entertainment vaping comes as fewer high school students admit to vaping than at any point since 2014, according to the latest federal statistics. The latest survey numbers show the teen vaping rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% in 2023. More than 1.6 million students reported vaping in the previous month — about one-third the number in 2019, when underage vaping peaked with the use of discrete, high-nicotine e-cigarettes like Juul, according to the Associated Press.
This year’s decline was mainly driven by a half-million fewer high school students who reported using e-cigarettes in the past month, officials said. Vaping was unchanged among middle schoolers, but remains less common in that group, at 3.5% of students.
“This is a monumental public health win,” FDA’s tobacco director Brian King told reporters. “But we can’t rest on our laurels. There’s clearly more work to do to further reduce youth use.”
Officials from the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed the big drop in vaping to recent age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers, including Chinese vaping companies who have sold their e-cigarettes illegally in the U.S. for years.
Use of the most popular e-cigarette among teens, Elf Bar, fell 36% in the wake of FDA warning letters to stores and distributors selling the brightly colored vapes, which come in flavors like watermelon ice and peach mango. The brand is part of a wave of cheap, disposable e-cigarettes from China that have taken over a large portion of the U.S. vaping market. The FDA has tried to block such imports, although Elf Bar and other brands have tried to find workarounds by changing their names, addresses and logos.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.