A new study of San Francisco’s flavored tobacco ban takes a different stance. Yale university researcher said that the policy implemented may force teens to smoke combustible cigarettes.

Ms. Abigail Friedman a PhD, assistant professor of public Health at Yale Institute for Social and Policy Research, as well as one of the most prominent scholars in the field of tobacco harm reduction and control who studied “Adolescent Smoking Disparity Analysis and the Ban on the Sale of Flavored Tobacco Products in San Francisco, California,” said that bans on the sale of flavored tobacco products imposed by the city and county of San Francisco in The United States of California hurt the rates of youth turning to smoking or other potentially more harmful forms of nicotine delivery.

Along with the conclusions from Friedman’s study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics results “San Francisco’s ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products has been linked to increased smoking rates among underage high school students compared to other school districts. Hence, while the policy applies to all tobacco products, the results may be greater for e-cigarette adolescents than for smokers because of the higher use of flavored tobacco in the e-cigarette population.

This raises concerns that reducing the use of flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems could incentivize young people who would otherwise use e-cigarettes instead of traditional smoking. In fact, the analysis of the relationship between the minimum legal age for sale of electronic nicotine delivery systems and adolescent smoking also suggests this substitution.

In addition, Friedman told reporters that “Although smoking and nicotine are inherently unsafe, most of the current evidence suggests that smoking is far more harmful and kills nearly one in five adults each year.” even well-intentioned laws that increase youth smoking can be a threat to public health.