Alan Gor 22 March 2025
This study by Dr Becky Freeman et al. is another example of anti-vaping bias distorting public health discourse. The authors claim that vaping has contributed to youth smoking, but their data tells a different story. Let’s explain why their conclusions are flawed and why the “gateway effect” remains a myth.
1. Misrepresenting the Data: Smoking Declines, Not Increases
The core argument is that the rate of decline in youth smoking slowed after vaping became popular. However, this is misleading for several reasons:
• Youth smoking has continued to decline dramatically in New Zealand. If vaping were a gateway to smoking, we would expect smoking rates to increase, not just slow in decline. Instead, smoking rates have collapsed to record lows.
• The claim that smoking rates “would have been even lower” without vaping is pure speculation, not evidence. Correlation does not imply causation, and the study fails to demonstrate a causal link between vaping and changes in smoking trends.
The idea that vaping increased smoking uptake is contradicted by data from countries with high vaping prevalence:
• United Kingdom: Youth smoking rates have continued to decline sharply alongside rising vaping rates (ASH UK, 2023).
• United States: The CDC’s data shows youth smoking plummeted from 15.8% in 2011 to 1.9% in 2022, a period when vaping surged (NYTS, 2022).
• New Zealand: ASH Year 10 surveys have consistently shown a near-total collapse in daily smoking among 14-15-year-olds, with rates dropping to less than 2% in 2022.
This real-world evidence completely contradicts the idea that vaping fuels youth smoking.
2. The Gateway Theory Has Been Debunked
The study leans on the old “gateway” claim, suggesting vaping may lead young people to take up smoking. But this theory has been refuted repeatedly:
• A comprehensive Cochrane review found no strong evidence supporting a gateway effect (Hartmann-Boyce et al., 2021).
• The UK government’s 2022 review on vaping stated there is no consistent evidence that vaping leads to smoking (Khan Review, 2022).
• Long-term studies, including one from Public Health England, conclude that the vast majority of youth who vape are already smokers or would have smoked anyway (McNeill et al., 2022).
Simply put, young people who experiment with vaping are the same group who would have experimented with smoking in previous generations. The notion that vaping is driving kids into cigarettes is completely unfounded.
3. Ignoring Other Factors That Influence Youth Smoking
The study authors claim they “controlled for cigarette prices,” but they fail to account for other major factors affecting smoking rates, such as:
• Changes in public attitudes towards smoking (smoking is far less socially acceptable than it was in the 1990s and early 2000s).
• Tobacco control measures, including bans on flavoured cigarettes, higher taxation, and plain packaging laws.
• Data inconsistencies—longitudinal studies always have variations, and cherry-picking dates to fit an anti-vaping narrative is bad science.
Have Regulators Considered That Their Policies Are to Blame?
A major flaw in the recent study is that it ignores an obvious alternative explanation: youth smoking rates may have slowed because regulations have made it harder for adolescents to access vaping products, not because vaping promotes smoking.
New Zealand has introduced increasingly strict vaping regulations over the past decade, including:
• 2018: Crackdown on vape sales to minors.
• 2020: The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act, which restricted advertising, set nicotine caps, and imposed flavour bans in general retail.
• 2023: Further restrictions, including a ban on disposable vapes and additional flavour limits.
These measures have made legal vaping products less accessible to young people, potentially slowing the displacement of smoking. If a safer alternative is harder to access, it’s hardly surprising that smoking rates didn’t decline as fast as they once did.
This mirrors what we see in Australia, where extreme anti-vaping policies have created a black market while youth smoking rates have stalled for the first time in decades. When regulators crack down on vaping, they don’t stop nicotine use—they just push people back toward cigarettes.
The authors of the study conveniently ignore this possibility. Instead of asking whether vaping restrictions contributed to the trend they observed, they assumed vaping itself was the problem. But when you consider real-world evidence, a different picture emerges: tighter vaping regulations may be slowing progress in reducing youth smoking, not vaping itself.
A well-conducted study would have accounted for these external factors instead of blaming vaping for a statistical slowdown in smoking declines.
4. The Real Threat: Misinformation That Protects Cigarette Sales
Anti-vaping activists will undoubtedly use this study and its misleading conclusions to justify harsher vaping restrictions. But restricting vaping does not protect young people—it protects the cigarette industry.
• The countries with the most extreme vaping restrictions (Australia, India, Thailand) have higher smoking rates than those with vaping-friendly policies (UK, Sweden, New Zealand pre-2023).
• Banning or restricting vaping leads to more youth turning to cigarettes—as seen in Australia, where illegal disposable vapes have flourished, and youth smoking has stalled for the first time in decades (AIHW, 2023).
The bottom line: This study doesn’t prove that vaping causes youth smoking—it proves that researchers with an anti-vaping agenda will twist data to fit their predetermined conclusions. Meanwhile, real-world evidence continues to show that vaping is a harm-reduction tool, not a gateway to smoking.
Flawed Science, Dangerous Policy Implications
This study is an example of cherry-picked data and statistical manipulation designed to cast doubt on vaping’s harm reduction benefits. The overwhelming weight of evidence shows that:
✅ Youth smoking has plummeted where vaping is available.
✅ There is no credible evidence of a gateway effect.
✅ Restricting vaping harms public health by pushing more people back to cigarettes.
New Zealand and Australia need evidence-based policies, not anti-vaping fearmongering. If anything, this study proves what we already know: when vaping is available, smoking rates drop drastically.