One of San Francisco’s leading economist, Ted Egan, contends that the Californian city’s ban on e-cigarette sales will increase cigarette smoking as vapers switch to combustible cigarettes, Reason reported.

Last month, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban the sale of e-cigarettes, the report said. The sale of cigarettes remains legal in the Californian city.
Ted Egan and his colleagues analyse the economic impact of legislation in San Francisco. Their analysis of the impact are then sent to the Board of Supervisors and made public on the Controller's Office website, according to the report. If their results show that the legislation will have no impact, they do not make any further enquires.
The results from the analysis found that the ban would not have a negative impact on the city’s economy, but that the money currently being spent on vaping products would be spent on other nicotine products, such as combustible cigarettes, according to the report. This information was originally published in a 15 May interview in The Chronicle, which was a month before the ban was approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors.
“This has to be one of the most insane public health proposals I have ever seen,” Michael Siegel, a physician and professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, was quoted as writing. “This legislation basically says: ‘We care so much about the health of our kids that we can’t allow e-cigarettes to remain on the market until they have a complete safety review. However, we are perfectly happy allowing cigarettes—which have had extensive safety reviews and been found to be killing hundreds of thousands of Americans each year—to remain on the market.”
“With or without a report from an economist, anyone with a modicum of common sense should be able to recognise that banning the sale of America’s most popular quit-smoking tool will inevitably lead to more cigarettes being smoked,” Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, was quoted as saying.
The ban is scheduled to take effect the beginning of 2020.