Poll: Strong majority favors banning flavored vaping products

A strong majority of voters say they have significant health concerns about vaping and support banning candy and fruit flavors, according to the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.

The survey found that 77 percent of voters say they have “significant” concerns about vaping, a figure that is nearly identical among Republicans, Democrats, independents, men and women.

The Trump administration announced Thursday it would ban certain flavors of cartridge-based e-cigarettes that are popular among young people.

Seventy-two percent of voters surveyed support banning candy and fruit-flavored vapes, which are popular with young people.

Ninety-five percent said that vaping should be illegal for children under the age of 18, and the poll is split 50-50 on whether vaping should be allowed for adults.

“The polling shows considerable public concern about vaping with universal support for bans on kids and very strong support for the ban of on flavors popular with kids,” said Harvard CAPS/Harris polling director Mark Penn. “The concern is so great that the public is split on a complete ban even for adults, with a majority of women supporting the ban outright.” 

The Trump administration will allow the manufacture and sale of menthol and tobacco-flavored products, but companies have 30 days to stop selling other flavors of cartridge-based e-cigarettes.

The move, announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, is meant to combat a surge of youth vaping but stops short of a proposal floated by Trump in late 2019. The administration had previously said it would ban every flavor of e-cigarettes except for tobacco.

“By prioritizing enforcement against the products that are most widely used by children, our action today seeks to strike the right public health balance by maintaining e-cigarettes as a potential off-ramp for adults using combustible tobacco while ensuring these products don’t provide an on-ramp to nicotine addiction for our youth,” Azar said in a statement.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey was conducted online within the U.S. among a representative sample of 2,010 registered voters between Dec. 27 and Dec. 29 by the Harris Poll. 

Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, education, political party and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

The sampling margin of error of the poll is 2 percentage points.