Public Reactions to the New York State Policy on Flavored E-Cigarettes on Twitter: Observational Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Flavored electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have become popular in recent years, especially among youth and young adults. To address the epidemic of e-cigarettes, New York State approved a ban on sales of most flavored vaping products other than tobacco and menthol flavors on September 17, 2019. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to examine the public responses on social media to the policy on flavored e-cigarettes in New York State. METHODS Twitter posts (tweets) related to e-cigarettes and the New York State policy on flavored e-cigarettes were collected using Twitter streaming API from June 2019 to December 2019. Tweets from New York State, and other states that did not have a flavored e-cigarettes policy were extracted. Sentiment analysis was applied to analyze the proportion of negative and positive tweets about e-cigarettes or the flavor policy. Topic modeling was applied to e-cigarettes related datasets to identify the most frequent topics before and after the announcement of the New York State policy on flavored e-cigarettes. RESULTS Our results showed that average number of tweets related to e-cigarettes and the New York State policy on flavored e-cigarettes increased in both New York State and other states after the NY flavor policy was announced. Sentiment analysis revealed that after the announcement of the New York State flavor policy, in both New York State and other states, the proportion of negative tweets on e-cigarettes increased, from 34.07% to 44.58% and from 32.48% to 44.40% respectively, while positive tweets decreased significantly, from 39.03% to 32.86% and from 42.78% to 33.93% respectively. The majority of tweets about the New York State flavor policy were negative in both New York State (from 88.78% to 83.46%) and other states (from 78.43% to 81.54%) while New York State had a higher proportion of negative tweets than other states. Topic modeling results demonstrated that teenage vaping and health problems were the most discussed topic associated with e-cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS Public attitudes toward e-cigarettes became more negative on Twitter after the New York State announced the policy on flavored e-cigarettes. Twitter users in other states that did not have such a policy on flavored e-cigarettes paid close attention to New York State flavor policy. This study provides some valuable information about the potential impact of the flavored e-cigarettes policy in New York State on public attitudes towards the flavored e-cigarettes.