Abstract on Flavoured Vape Violations California
Objective In December 2022, California became the second US state to prohibit the sale of most flavoured tobacco/nicotine products. To our knowledge, this is the first observational study to assess violations of California’s law. It reports on the availability of flavoured vape products in vape shops and tests whether flavoured vape products were more common in vape shops nearer to college campuses compared with those farther from college campuses, adjusting for neighbourhood demographics.
Methods Between April and July 2023, observations were recorded at vape shops (n=400) nearer to (≤3 miles) or farther from (>3 miles) a college campus. Vape shops were the focus of this study because a large proportion (48.2%) of US young adults purchase vapes from these venues. Availability of any disposable nicotine vapes, JUUL pods and flavoured varieties of these products were recorded. Multivariable logistic regressions tested relationships between flavoured product availability, proximity to a college campus and store neighbourhood demographics.
Results In violation of California’s law, flavoured disposable vapes and/or JUUL pods were available in 50.3% of all vape shops studied. Flavoured disposable vapes were in 53.2% of vape shops with any disposable vapes, and flavoured JUUL pods were in 30.9% of vape shops with any JUUL pods. Contrary to expectation, no significant relationships were identified between the availability of flavoured vapes and proximity to a college campus or store neighbourhood demographics.
Conclusions This study revealed high rates of violations among vape shops within 4 to 7 months after the implementation of California’s law. Efforts to improve retailer education and enforcement are warranted.
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. De-identified data and R code are available upon reasonable request to the authors.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. De-identified data and R code are available upon reasonable request to the authors.
Footnotes
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Contributors LH led conceptualisation, as well as funding acquisition with support from JJP and NS. AA led data curation, and formal analysis with NS. NS also led methodology and supervision, while TOJ led project administration. AA led the original draft writing and all authors contributed to reviewing and editing, with LH and NS taking equal primary responsibility and TOJ and JJP providing additional support. LH is the guarantor.
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Funding This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (R01 CA217165).
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Competing interests Unrelated to this project, JJP has provided consultation to pharmaceutical and technology companies that make medications and other treatments for quitting smoking. JJP also has served as an expert witness in lawsuits against tobacco companies. The Institutional Review Board at Stanford University School of Medicine determined this research does not involve human subjects (Protocol ID 42275).
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Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer-reviewed.
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Author note Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Arzoo Alam, MPH, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Prevention Research Center, 3180 Porter Drive, Palo Alto, CA, USA. Email: arzoo.alam@stanford.edu.
