Michigan will become the first US state to ban flavoured e-cigarettes, joining liberal US cities in an effort to curb teen vaping, The Guardian reported.

Michigan’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer announced the state health department would immediately ban retail and online sales of flavoured e-cigarettes through an emergency rule-making process, the report said. The move will prohibit the sale and the misleading marketing of flavoured nicotine vaping products. Whitmer raised concerns about fruit and candy flavoured e-cigarettes being marketed to children as healthier alternatives to smoking. “It would be great if, at the federal level, we knew there was a [US] surgeon general warning on all vape products, that they were treated like tobacco, taxed like tobacco, but none of that is happening,” she was quoted as saying.
According to the report, recent US government surveys found that the number of vaping high school students has increased by more than 900 per cent between 2011 and 2015, prompting an advisory from the US surgeon general on their popularity. Seven out of ten teenagers have been exposed to e-cigarette advertisements, studies show.
The American Vaping Association called Whitmer’s call for new rules a “backdoor prohibition”. Without citing specific evidence, the group said the ban would hurt thousands of businesses and force adults to go back to smoking, the report said.