That is a savagely, tragically dangerous position to take in a country with subsidized healthcare. We have many examples of unintended consequences resulting from attempted behavior modification with the goal of improving health, and government policies, due to the way they are executed, are inherently much more difficult to reverse or change than education. Just for one example, look at the American Heart Association. In the 70s, they believed they saw evidence that the amount of the diet which came from saturated fats produced increased risks to heart health. So they pursued governmental avenues to reduce the saturated fat intake of Americans by 15%. They succeeded. Saturated fat was removed from many products available on store shelves. Which made them taste like cardboard. Which made sales fall. To restore flavor, they filled the products with sugar and salt. Sales improved. Average American caloric intake skyrocketed. It birthed an obesity epidemic, a diabetes epidemic, and yes, a heart disease epidemic. Meanwhile, research showed saturated fat wasn't quite so dangerous as once thought.

Trusting people to their own devices and doing no more than education is not perfect. But it reduces the odds of unintended consequences like this drastically. It also makes it much easier to change course when necessary.

Not the case at all. We have subsidized healthcare in the USA and have had it for a long time. The poor (typically the demographics of vapers and smokers) rely on free healthcare quite a bit via Medicaid and or just having the tax payers foot their hospital bill for them. Older people have Medicare. We also subsidize addiction facilities and mental facilities as well. We pay way more for our healthcare than most other nations but we also have most of the medical innovations occurring in the states. All that said, yeah the government does not allow citizens to jump off buildings and run out into traffic because they think it's a good idea. We try to warn against those types of things and it's no different than what the CDC is doing by warning Americans to stop vaping until we know what is killing people.

Since smokers use health services much less than non-smokers, your view is that non-US governments should encourage smoking then?

Sounds like a good argument against subsidized healthcare to me

But even in this supposed nanny-state of the UK with it's single payer commie healthcare there are no laws preventing people buying and using vapes.