How to win the vote of generation vape

Nearly one in five young adults now vape. Gallup’s August survey found that 9 percent of adults overall use vapes. Nicotine pouches also skew young.

We increasingly have a generation whose habits look very different from those of their parents. This is a reality progressives must acknowledge, and a voting base we should strive to serve. I learned the importance of confronting reality as mayor of Ithaca during the opioid crisis.

In 2014, three people died of heroin overdoses in Ithaca in just 10 days . We watched people die while America argued about whether harm reduction somehow condoned drug use. So, we developed the Ithaca Plan , bringing prevention, treatment, law enforcement and harm reduction together. We even proposed exploring supervised injection.

My argument then was simple: If your goal is treatment and recovery, then use evidence-based approaches to protecting people, and start by keeping them alive. Tobacco presents different risks. But the governing lesson is familiar: Condemnation is not a substitute for sensible policy. Moral judgment is not a substitute for evidence.

And the evidence has changed. The Food and Drug Administration says explicitly that no tobacco product is safe. But it also says tobacco products exist on a continuum of risk : cigarettes are the most harmful, while non-combusted products including e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches generally carry lower health risks.

In June, FDA went further, authorizing 20 Zyn nicotine pouches to carry a modified-risk claim explaining that using them instead of cigarettes lowers the risk of several major smoking-related diseases.

The evidence on vaping is strengthening too. In a July JAMA commentary , University of Massachusetts assistant professor Jamie Hartmann-Boyce addressed what she called the genuine dilemma facing doctors counseling smokers. The underlying evidence, she wrote, shows nicotine e-cigarettes are more effective for smoking cessation than FDA-approved nicotine-replacement therapies. A companion JAMA paper recommended integrating e-cigarettes into clinicians’ conversations with adults trying to quit cigarettes.

That does not make vaping harmless. Nicotine is addictive. Kids should not use it. Long-term effects require continued study. But “not harmless” and “as harmful as cigarettes” are very different statements.

For policymakers, that creates questions about what sensible regulation looks like: age verification, manufacturing standards, ingredient disclosure, restrictions on marketing to children and an FDA authorization system capable of distinguishing regulated products from illicit ones.

There is also a generational political reality worth understanding. Vaping is most prevalent among Americans under 30, and Pew currently finds registered voters in that age group prefer Democratic congressional candidates by a margin of 47 percent to 24 percent.

Those statistics overlap; they do not prove that tobacco policy determines anyone’s vote. What they do show is that millions of young Americans who are aligned with Democratic values use these products.

My experience in Ithaca taught me that shame does not make addiction disappear. Neither does pretending that people will stop doing something simply because the government wishes they would. Good public policy begins with the world as it actually exists — and reaching out a supportive hand instead of a wagging finger.

Democrats have a chance to run on these issues and be viewed as a caring but nonjudgmental party; more like cool parents and less like the worst members of a homeowners’ association board.

Svante Myrick is president of People For the American Way.