Utah’s 2025 ban on most vapes arrived with its usual blend of moral concern and a quiet sense of triumph, as if the legislature had caught the entire population sneaking out after curfew. On paper, it was a public-health victory; in practice, it had the unmistakable tone of a uniquely Mormon cultural tantrum—neither broadly “conservative” nor generically “right-wing,” but rooted squarely in the state’s specific religious reflexes. The more I read, the less this resembles a moral crusade to “protect others” and the more it looks like prejudice—an easy way for legislators who can’t solve real problems to indulge in binary thinking while enjoying the thrill of authoritarian control, which of course won’t fix anything.
When Anti-Nicotine Posturing Is Blatant Prejudice
The whole nicotine-without-cigarettes era got too visible for adults to ignore: teenagers blowing mango clouds behind cinderblock walls, college students vaping their way through study sessions, and long-time smokers who had happily traded in “cancer sticks” for something that smelled vaguely like Bath & Body Works seasonal release. And then, almost overnight, the adults that quit cigarettes in favor of vapes were told—again—that anyone who uses nicotine is unwelcome. It didn’t matter if you were vaping to quit smoking. The subtext, delivered with a tight smile, was pretty clear: you are not welcome here.
Underneath all the moral language, this doesn’t look like a public-health effort so much as a familiar habit of deciding which people are acceptable and which aren’t. The bias isn’t subtle. It shows up most clearly in how we treat people who run high-energy, fast-thinking, distractible, or “busy-brained.” Research even shows nicotine can sharpen attention and improve cognitive performance in adults with ADHD, acting as a compound that can both focus and calm depending on the dose. But instead of acknowledging that some people genuinely function differently, we punish the coping mechanism.
There’s also a class dimension here—nicotine has long been a practical tool in working environments where you don’t get long breaks or ideal conditions. And historically, higher smoking rates in certain racial and ethnic communities reflect stress, long hours, and limited resources, not any kind of moral weakness.
And in Utah, the contradiction is almost funny: a state where caffeine is totally acceptable as long as it’s in a neon-green soda bottle, yet nicotine is treated like a sign of personal ruin and moral decay. If you’re drinking Mountain Dew but furious about vapers, it’s pretty clear the outrage isn’t really about health.
And wow—it’s strangely timed that just as cigarettes were pushed out of public life and standardized testing supercharged the amount of time children needed to sit at desks, rates of Ritalin and amphetamine use exploded. (If you were wondering, amphetamine use and marathon desk-sitting are not very healthy for anyone, but especially not kids.)
The ’90s: When ADHD Diagnoses Exploded and Everyone Met Ritalin
Once you look at the ’90s, the whole picture snaps into focus. That decade saw an explosion in ADHD diagnoses, especially among elementary-school boys. Awareness increased, yes, but so did incentives. In 1991, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was reauthorized and explicitly included ADHD as a disability. Schools now had funding and legal support to diagnose and serve these kids. Medicaid covered ADHD assessments and treatment. Suddenly, teachers saw boys bouncing off walls and there was a name for it, a category, a code to bill.
And right alongside that rise came the mass prescription of amphetamines to children. Ritalin, Adderall—the drugs worked remarkably well, and quickly, because they targeted the exact neurological pathways that also make nicotine feel stabilizing for certain people. That’s the link no one wants to talk about: the overlap between ADHD-type brains and a biological predisposition to nicotine addiction. The same mechanism that makes a stimulant focus you is the one that makes nicotine feel like relief. You can condemn the habit, but you can’t condemn the wiring.
And again, how is it normal to hand an 8-year-old daily Ritalin and Diet Coke, but unacceptable for an adult to enjoy a piña colada vape?
Bodies That Need Movement, Breaks, or Recycled Air
The more research I read, the clearer it becomes that many highly creative, intelligent, or high-energy people regulate themselves through movement. They pace. They walk. They take breaks. They simply cannot sit obediently through eight hours of desk life without some kind of physical outlet.
For decades, smoking provided that outlet—an excuse to step outside, stretch, breathe air that didn’t originate in a ceiling vent. Once upon a time, it was practically a workplace accessory for artists and writers. Vaping later became the modern, USB-charged version of that same micro-escape. It’s not that nicotine users are weak; it’s that many of the environments we force people into are fundamentally unnatural—especially for high-energy children or creative, analytical adults whose brains run hotter than average.
These aren’t moral failings. They’re functional strategies for staying sane in a desk-centric culture or doing deep creative work at all. Research shows that many behaviors labeled as “ADHD symptoms” overlap with creativity, divergent thinking, and cognitive flexibility. Ferris Jabr, writing in The New Yorker, pulls this together clearly: walking boosts cognition by increasing blood flow and oxygen, improving memory and attention, and even enlarging the hippocampus.
The Stanford experiments he cites—conducted by Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz—found that students generated four to six more creative uses for everyday objects while walking than while sitting. Ninety-five percent were able to produce fresh metaphors on a walk, compared to only half of the seated students. Walking, it turns out, is excellent for open-ended, generative thinking but terrible for tasks that require one precise answer—proof that even the brain prefers a bit of variety.
Maybe the Issue Isn’t Nicotine—Maybe It’s the World We Expect People to Function In
When you connect all the threads—Utah’s vape ban, nicotine stigma, ADHD-related neurobiology, the need for movement, and the cognitive benefits of walking—the story looks less like a public-health crusade and more like a society that refuses to design itself around real human variation. Some people run high-energy. Some people think better when they can move. Some people genuinely focus better with a compound that sharpens attention. These aren’t moral flaws; they’re differences in how people function.
We could adjust the environments. We could acknowledge that people aren’t all wired the same way. Instead, we outlaw the coping mechanisms and call it virtue.
Works Cited
Berkowitz, Roger. “Walking and Thinking.” Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College
Jabr, Ferris. “Why Walking Helps Us Think.” The New Yorker, 3 Sept. 2014
Oppezzo, Marily, and Daniel L. Schwartz. “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, vol. 40, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1142–1152.