The Interprofessional Federation of Vaping (Fivape) believes that the National Committee against Smoking is wrong and that flavored cigarettes are very useful for quitting smoking.
“We are a little in shock by the request that has been formed by the CNCT”, reacted on franceinfo Jean Moiroud on Monday February 13. The president of the Interprofessional Federation of Vaping (Fivape) does not understand the decision of the National Committee against Smoking (CNCT), which calls for the banning of flavors in all devices that contain nicotine, apart from that of tobacco. .“Flavours are a key factor in maintaining motivation” to quit smoking, recalls Jean Moiroud. He believes that there is no “statistical correlation between experimentation with vaping products and a subsequent switch to electronic cigarettes”.
franceinfo: What does the sale of flavored electronic cigarettes represent in your shops?
Jean Moiroud: This is the main product that smokers buy to quit smoking. So the question is very important to us. We are a little shocked by the request that was formed by the CNCT. It’s about 50 to 60% of the products. Knowing that the products of initiation to vaping, those by which we tear ourselves away from tobacco, are generally tobacco flavors, but also minty. Flavors are an absolutely crucial factor in maintaining motivation. It is a constituent element of the effectiveness of the vaping process which, I remind you, is the method that is both the most effective, but also the most popular with the French for quitting tobacco.
Do these aromas only concern young people or all audiences?
The question of minors, I understand it and I respect it all the more since I am a parent. But it has to be confronted with reality. Today, young people, with or without the vape, they get into tobacco between twelve and fifteen years old. What often leads them to do so is cannabis use. It should be a priority. The question of minors and vaping products was settled very clearly in 2016 by the ministry of Marisol Touraine, who quite simply banned vaping products from sale to minors in specialized shops in particular. This is a prohibition that is particularly well respected.
According to the National Anti-Tobacco Committee, flavoring is the first step that leads to products that are very attractive to young people, but it also leads to nicotine and addiction.
The question of this alleged bridge effect between vaping and tobacco is a subject with which we have been dealing for ten years that our products have existed. It was totally debunked. There is no statistical correlation that has been found between experimentation with vaping products, either with or without nicotine, and a subsequent switch to electronic cigarettes. I have a very interesting statistic, and that is that tobacco use among teenagers in the United States, in high schools, has dropped from 12% to 2% between 2012 and 2022, against the backdrop of an alleged consumption epidemic of nicotine. This is a statistic which is very interesting to study and which shows that it is not because we are sounding the alarm bell on nicotine consumption among adolescents that there is not a concrete collapse of the smoking at home.
What consequence does this 50 to 60% drop in sales have for your businesses?
They would be totally threatened. But it’s not just an economic issue. It is above all a subject of public health and how we try to help smokers quit smoking. Today, in France, there are around three million people whose quitting process relies on vaping products on a daily basis. And the majority of these people use flavors to quit smoking. What do we do? Are they prevented from accessing the products that help them on a daily basis? Are they sent back to tobacco without scruples? And leaving only tobacco-flavored flavors on the market is not really a profitable strategy. How do you want to keep smokers away from tobacco with the very flavor they’re trying to get rid of? This is not serious. We need to stop putting poison and medicine in the same bag and let vaping professionals do their job.