Young adults preference for characterising versus concept e-cigarette flavours: an exploration of industry flavour renaming tactics

Introduction

Characterising e-cigarette flavours (eg, blue raspberry) have a clear flavour name, are associated with youth vaping initiation,1 and are often subject to federal, state and local regulation in the USA.2 In contrast, non-characterising or concept flavours use ambiguous naming conventions (eg, unicorn snot) and may be more difficult to regulate.3 4 In August 2020, the vape company, BIDI Stick, renamed its vape flavours to ‘ensure that the products aren’t appealing to the youth’, which included renaming several characterising flavour names with concept flavour names.5 Because the extent to which the new names appeal to young people is unclear,5 6 we explored differences in preference for the original characterising flavours versus the new concept flavours.

Methods

In 2021, we conducted a national survey on tobacco marketing, with a convenience sample of 1816 young adults, ages 18–24 (mean=21…

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