Ohio Rs continue to fight over nicotine policy, but new data keeps popping

It wasn’t that long ago that Gov. Kasich was struggling with both helping smokers to quit and rising healthcare costs.  Looks like we may be at those crossroads again.  As Ohio considers various bans on nicotine flavoring and/or taxes on products like nicotine pouches and vapes, this seems prescient– new news (ha, ha) about how non-cigarette nicotine products are being used by smokers:

Nicotine pouches might be helping tobacco users quit smoking and vaping, a new study says.

The pouches — sold under brand names like Velo and Zyn — can’t be marketed as smoking cessation aids like nicotine patches, gums or lozenges, researchers said.

But it appears that some are using the pouches to get their nicotine fix without resorting to smoking, researchers recently reported in JAMA Network Open.

People were nearly four times more likely to use nicotine pouches daily if they’d recently quit smoking, researchers found.

“Our results suggest that adults may be using nicotine pouches for harm reduction given that use is highest among those that have recently quit another tobacco product or e-cigarettes,” lead researcher Cristine Delnevo said in a news release. She’s director of the Rutgers University Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies in New Brunswick, N.J.

We know that smoking can be a major driver of health care costs.  Legislators need to be very aware that when they put burdens like flavor bans or taxes on a product like nicotine pouches that there could be some very bad unintended consequences.  In this case, we need to be sure to look at the bigger picture and decided what’s better: disincentivizing nicotine use in any form or over all reductions in smoking rates.  If we did the math, less smoking is going to be what is best for Ohio financially.

Remember, Kasich screwed up his Medicaid numbers royally, so it’s important for Ohio Rs– DeWine and legislators included– to not mess this up.