Around the world, politicians love to stand behind a podium, look solemnly into a camera and declare their unyielding hatred for Big Tobacco. It’s a familiar performance. Dramatic proclamations about the harms of smoking, ambitious targets for a “smoke-free future” and the unwavering insistence that governments are working tirelessly to crush the cigarette industry.
And then, those same governments turn around and do something extraordinary. They hand a near-monopoly on the future of nicotine to the tobacco industry.
They do this by systematically eliminating meaningful competition to the traditional cigarette—the disruptive technologies that have helped millions of people switch to safer alternatives. Where those safer products aren’t outright banned, governments skew the new-nicotine market against smaller manufacturers, reducing the range and effectiveness of legally available smoking-cessation options.
Arkansas, for instance, has a new law that doesn’t just ban sales of many vaping products, but also bans personal possession of them. In doing so, Arkansas joins a cozy club including Qatar, Singapore, Venezuela and North Korea.
Under the guise of “protecting youth” and “ensuring compliance,” Arkansas has adopted a Premarket Tobacco Product Application (PMTA) registry law that only allows the sale (or possession) of vaping products authorized by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
All currently authorized products are owned by tobacco companies; the FDA’s arduous and opaque PMTA process favors companies with the deepest pockets. A few menthol options aside, all are in tobacco flavor only—courtesy of the FDA’s de facto flavor ban—which helps explain why most people in the US who switch from cigarettes to vapes are using the unauthorized products that politicians want to stamp out.
This is like saying you hate fossil fuels while banning electric cars.
All over the world, from the US to the United Kingdom, from India to Australia, governments are taking a sledgehammer to nicotine innovation, destroying the very products that are actually reducing cigarette smoking.
This is like saying you hate fossil fuels while banning electric cars.
Various factors help explain it. In some places, such as India and Vietnam—both of which have banned vapes—governments own large stakes in their nations’ dominant tobacco companies. Tobacco industry lobbying, as seen with US PMTA registry bills, is powerful. And everywhere, the demonization of safer nicotine products, spearheaded by the World Health Organization, is instrumental.
The UK has for years been a leader in tobacco harm reduction. Now, with a new disposable vapes ban and the government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill barrelling through Parliament, the country risks reversing years of progress. This bill promises a total ban on advertising for reduced-risk products, a prohibition on heated tobacco products and Swedish snus, plain packaging rules for vapes, the removal of flavors that adults actually like, and even a bizarre crackdown on vending machines in mental health facilities.
And just to show it really means business, the UK government plans to impose the highest vape liquid taxes in Europe, starting in 2026. Because nothing says “we care about smokers” like making safer alternatives more expensive than the deadly ones.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill also includes the incremental prohibition of cigarette sales to anyone born after 2008. But this targets a young population with a very low smoking rate. Like all drug prohibitions, it is sure to foster an illicit market—and especially so when access to the safer substitutes that youth prefer is so hampered.
In so many jurisdictions, policies banning or restricting safer products amount to a gift-wrapped market handoff to the cigarette industry and its few government-sanctioned safer-nicotine subsidiaries. By choking off independent and disruptive players, governments are guaranteeing that the only nicotine products readily available will be those manufactured by the companies they claim to despise.
Millions of people who might have switched are being locked into, or pushed back to, a behavior that governments claim to oppose.
To be clear, in any real-world projection of a positive outcome, tobacco companies have an important role. These companies are not going to disappear, and a realistic best-case scenario involves them transitioning to sales of safer products instead of cigarettes, as some have pledged to do. Their reach and huge customer bases would make such transitions very significant.
But to expect optimally fast and effective transitions in this environment—where innovation and disruptive competition are being stifled, where options that people prefer are being removed, and where cigarettes as a result will remain extremely lucrative—is to live in a fantasy land.
The irony is staggering. The same officials who denounce the influence of Big Tobacco are now regulating smaller, innovation-driven companies out of existence, effectively turning the nicotine landscape into a cartel with little else to choose from except the most harmful products.
Millions of people who might have switched are being locked into, or pushed back to, a behavior that governments claim to oppose. It’s a perverse outcome dressed in the language of public health.
The only thing more dangerous than cigarettes is a public health policy that ensures they remain the only game in town.
What’s missing from all of this is any sense of proportion, or of basic pragmatism. Harm reduction is no longer a radical concept. It’s been used successfully in everything from syringe provision to sexual health. And yet when it comes to nicotine, we’re stuck in a 1990s playbook where governments want just two acceptable options: quit completely or die trying.
People who can’t or won’t quit nicotine deserve the right to make healthier choices. And governments that claim to be against Big Tobacco should try proving it by supporting competition, not crushing it.
If they really want to hit the cigarette trade where it hurts, they should unleash the full potential of safer alternatives, regulate them sensibly, stop lying to the public about relative risks and let innovation flourish. Because the only thing more dangerous than cigarettes is a public health policy that ensures they remain the only game in town.
Photograph via Stockvault
The author’s employer, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, previously provided a one-off donation to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, to support travel to a harm reduction event. Filter‘s Editorial Independence Policy applies.
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