What were unintended consequences of smoking bans and how can we use second-order thinking to decrease health effects of smoking tobacco?
Back in 2003 when the smoking laws changed in New York City, increasing the cigarette tax and eliminating indoor smoking sections in restaurants and bars, I noticed some other interesting effects. (Note: I am not a smoker.)
The first change was related to the increased local price of a pack of cigarettes, which went up to around $7 at the time (now $10.50 and above). The new $7 price was double the earlier local price. It was a big jump and immediately noticeable. An increased cigarette price had already been connected to fewer cigarettes being smoked.
That price increase did something else too. It broke down the social bond shared by smokers — a bond that existed even among those who didn’t know each other. Here’s what I mean. Before the smoking ban, it was common to hear the following sentence while out: “Hey, could I bum a smoke from you?” After all, the cost of a single cigarette within a pack was only around $0.15 retail at the time, a price too low to ask for compensation.
After the ban, the sentence you started to hear was: “Hey, do you have an extra cigarette? I have fifty cents.” (A cigarette in a $7 pack of 20 has a cost of $0.35 to the person who bought the pack.)
So what happened was the sudden disappearance of a social bond of sharing and politeness, which had a root in change in cost.
Factors of easily shareable physical products
Cigarettes are the only commonly mass consumed item I can think of that were easily shareable and thus more easily sustained across populations and time. Factors of their shareability are:
- Cost to share is negligible (cigarette prices were originally low),
- The product is commonly consumed (in the US, adult market penetration of 45% in 1965, which had fallen to 21% by 2003. It was around 15% of a larger population in 2017, which is still significant),
- The product is commonly consumed at specific times and in specific places in public (evenings, inside or outside a bar),
- The product is commonly carried (portable in small packs),
- It is apparent when someone has the product, whether or not they are consuming it at that moment (someone smoking is obvious to others by sight, smell, and sound),
- The product is noticeable when being consumed (bonus on the above),
- The product has accessories which are also shareable (for cigarettes these are lighters and matches),
- Each copy of the product is interchangeable with another one (all cigarettes of one brand are the same).
Each of the above factors played nicely for the social spread and maintenance of smoking. But when the ban and price increase happened, the first item on the list was eliminated and part of the second and third items were too.
Now think of how this changes with electronic cigarettes or vaping.
- Cost to share is negligible? No. Price ranges from the tens to hundreds of dollars are common.
- The product is commonly consumed. More often yes.
- The product is commonly consumed at specific times and in specific places in public. Yes.
- The product is commonly carried. Yes.
- It is apparent when someone has the product, whether or not they are consuming it at that moment. Less than cigarettes, since e-cigarettes are often hidden from view and only pulled out when in use, often for a single puff.
- The product is noticeable when being consumed. Yes, but less than cigarettes.
- The product has accessories which are also shareable. No.
- Each copy of the product is interchangeable with another one. No, at least not with a stranger.
What should emerge with vaping is that smoking itself remains popular (and increases in popularity from the low point of pure tobacco cigarettes) but the smoking company business model adapts. Rather than legacy retail sales, we’ll see subscription models for e-liquid (the liquid that is vaporized by e-cigarette devices). Sharing someone’s e-cigarette will be like sharing someone’s phone. Not something that you’d ask a stranger and not something that you’d often ask a friend.
The nos have it because the nose has it
The second change of the smoking ban impacted smokers and non-smokers alike. The smell, or I should say, the lack of the smell of smoke. Years ago, if you went out in many parts of the US (or most parts of the world) to a party or bar, it would not be unusual to be in a cloud of smoke. If you stayed for long, your clothes stunk of smoke by the time you returned home. That was just the way it was. I still remember going to a party in the late 90s in San Francisco, which had already outlawed indoor smoking. The lack of smell was incongruous… and welcome.
So the smoking bans got us used to not smelling smoke and not coming home smelling of smoke. Any future product related to smoking had to incorporate lack of smell. Interestingly, the modern e-cigarette products — the ones that became popular, unlike their earlier versions — were developed immediately after the New York City smoking ban.
Electronic cigarettes of various types have been around in small quantities since the 1960s. Philip Morris alone had three earlier product experiments with electronic cigarettes which did not gain market share. Why didn’t those earlier e-cigarettes become successful? There were a few reasons.
Cigarette smoking (and smoking in general) was mainstream in the past. There was no reason to displace cigarette smoking with another form of smoking which had fewer social sharing factors.
Earlier forms of e-cigarettes made the smoker look idiotic. In 2007 a tobacco company exec I met randomly demoed an early e-cigarette device that he found. It toasted (didn’t burn) a specially designed cigarette that was inserted into the device. It didn’t generate much smoke. But he looked worse smoking the awkward electronic cigarette device than if he had lit up a regular cigarette.
It took the anti-smoking focus on health to open a door for e-cigarette products. It was beneficial that the early producers of the modern e-cigarette devices (those starting around 2004) were not the big tobacco companies (although already as of 2017 big tobacco companies in the US control the majority of e-cigarette market share).
Incredible amounts were spent fighting tobacco companies, on education, and certainly on health treatments for people suffering from smoking-related diseases like lung cancer (including via second-hand smoke). Fining big tobacco companies (payments are now past $100 billion) and then using the proceeds for anti-smoking education made an big impact, but also opened the door for vaping.
It was also essential that vaping claimed to be less harmful than traditional tobacco cigarettes, but didn’t require a total behavior change like nicotine patches and nicotine gum. Some groups not affiliated with tobacco companies are encouraging smokers to switch to vaping for health reasons. It’s like a belated realization that people didn’t need to quit smoking in order to drive down the health problems. They don’t need to quit — they just needed to smoke differently.
Considering the above, could we have gotten to the future faster?