A recent press release from the New York City Health Department, calling on New Yorkers to “imagine a city free from the harms of tobacco products,” reads like a triumphalist declaration in a misguided war against the very tools that could end smoking.
The fingerprints of Michael Bloomberg—the billionaire former NYC mayor, who bankrolls a global vendetta against people who vape—are all over it.
“We thank the Partnership for Healthy Cities Initiative, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Vital Strategies, and the World Health Organization for funding this collaborative effort,” said NYC Health Department Acting Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse.
Every one of those groups is Bloomberg-funded. Morse’s department received $100,000 from the Health Cities Initiative in 2024, “to combat the harms of commercial tobacco and nicotine products, like e-cigarettes (vapes).”
At the heart of the press release is a glaring falsehood: the conflation of vapes with “one of the leading preventable causes of death in our city.”
Cloaked in public health language, the department’s announcement of its future tobacco control plans signals that the city is doubling down on ideological opposition to tobacco harm reduction.
At the heart of the press release is a glaring falsehood: the conflation of vapes, and other safer nicotine alternatives like pouches and heated tobacco products, with “one of the leading preventable causes of death in our city.”
This is not only wrong, but dangerous due to the influence it will have on people who smoke. The NYC campaign has been issuing grants to various organizations to “share tobacco-related educational messaging.”
What people won’t have been told is that there has not been a single reliably documented death anywhere in the world that’s directly attributable to the use of regulated safer nicotine products. Smoking, on the other hand, is responsible for 480,000 deaths every year in the United States alone, including 28,000 in New York State. Equating these radically different products is not public health, it is propaganda.
The press release applies some sleight of hand to this fundamental, inconvenient difference. It warns that promoting harm reduction options “may lead to a new generation being hooked on these highly addictive commercial nicotine products”—as if addiction (the existence of which is dubious in the absence of serious harms) should be considered a problem comparable to mass death.
But how much does it have to say about the real killer?
Tellingly, the term “smoking” is used just three times in the release, while “nicotine”—the stimulant that does not cause smoking-related diseases—earns twice as much ink.
The term “e-cigarettes” appears nine times; the term “cigarettes” is not used even once.
It’s worth asking why smoking has declined so much in NYC. A significant part of the answer is vaping.
This misdirection ignores decades of scientific consensus. It is the combustion of tobacco—the inhalation of smoke filled with thousands of toxins and carcinogens—that causes cancer, heart disease and death. To center the conversation on nicotine rather than combustion is to wilfully ignore the cause of the problem.
The press release boasts that New York City’s adult smoking rate has fallen from 22 percent in 2002 to 8 percent in 2023. That is commendable progress. But it’s worth asking why smoking has declined so much in that timeframe. A significant part of the answer is vaping. Millions of people in the US have turned to vapes and other low-risk options to quit smoking. Yet instead of celebrating these tools, the city demonizes them.
The city is engaged in an ongoing crackdown. Since May 2024, “Operation Padlock to Protect” has seized more than $94 million in “illegal” vaping and cannabis products. Rather than advocating for the FDA to do its job of regulating vapes, NYC is content to raid stores.
When people want substances, and restrictions on legal access make unregulated markets lucrative, such crackdowns are futile. In this scenario, adults who smoke are left with fewer options to switch, youth can buy from unregulated vendors, and vapers of all ages are left without consumer safeguards.
The city’s recent lawsuit against distributors of flavored disposable vapes, accused of selling products in “such youth-attracting flavors as pink lemonade, watermelon, banana ice, lychee ice, and cool mint,” further highlights its moral panic. Adults also like flavors. In fact, flavors are a key reason why vaping helps people quit smoking.
Yet the city would rather frame flavors as a youth-only issue and pretend that banning them, as New York State did in 2020, is the answer.
New York City’s stance on safer nicotine products does nothing to diminish smoking. On the contrary, it protects the combustible cigarette trade by kneecapping its safer competitors.
Ironically, the press release tacitly acknowledges the role of nicotine alternatives when it points to the New York State Smokers’ Quitline, through which people can “apply for a free starter kit of nicotine medications”—a level of access and attraction that will never remotely match being able to pick up enjoyable vaping products at your local store.
NYC supports harm reduction in other areas. But when it comes to nicotine, the city discards that logic entirely.
Harm reduction is a well-established public health principle. If people cannot or will not quit a risky behavior, the state should facilitate less harmful alternatives. New York City supports seat belts, methadone, syringe service programs and two overdose prevention centers—where people can use banned drugs like fentanyl in safe conditions.
But when it comes to nicotine, the city discards that logic entirely.
The Bloomberg organizations involved in this campaign have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into anti-vaping efforts worldwide, distorting or dismissing the evidence as they go. Their influence is pushing cities like New York into regressive policies, and denying the public honest and accurate health information about relative risks.
The people of New York City—including thousands whose lives could be saved by switching from cigarettes to safer alternatives—deserve better.
Public health isn’t served by fear, ideology or misguided moral crusades. It is served by facts, compassion and a commitment to saving lives—even when that challenges entrenched beliefs and powerful institutions.
Photograph by Arturo Pardavila III via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0
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