Table 2.

Select example quotes of participants' perceptions that the “more harmful” statement^a was stronger than the “not safe” modified risk statement^b.

•“Because is harmful is more effective than ‘no tobacco product is safe’, everybody knows that already and they don't care…It is smoother and it is more direct.” (male non-e-cigarette user, age 32) •“This second one [Harmful statement] jumped out at me…was stronger than the first one [Not Safe statement]…because it's telling me that it is, it is harmful to your health…whereas the first one is saying it's substantially… it's not telling me that.” (female non-e-cigarette user, age 57) •“It is saying that it is harmful, it is letting us know for sure it is harmful… There is no doubt to it that it is going to hurt you, it is going to put a damper on your health.” (female non-e-cigarette user, age 50) •“Same message, different wording. But for the second one, it just…the second one kind of speaks to me more. It's a little more effective. Um, it seems like less of a sales pitch uh than the first one, only because of wording.” (male non-e-cigarette user, age 29) •“…this one saying ‘no tobacco product is safe’- it is talking about regular cigarettes but this one is saying ‘this product may be harmful to your health’, this is talking directly about e-cigarettes. So I feel like this one [Harmful statement] is specifically talking about e-cigarettes more than this one [Not Safe].” (male non-e-cigarette user, age 19) •“Yeah, it's [Not Safe statement] not saying that it's gonna be harmful to your health like the other one is [harmful statement]. This is just saying ‘no tobacco is safe, but this one's better for you!’” (female non-e-cigarette user, age 58) •“I think message 7 [Not Safe statement] is it's almost like they're trying to sway you like ‘hey listen nothing's really safe out there, but we've got some good stuff that's not so bad.’ …where I feel like 7a [Harmful statement] is actually talking about your health… It's becoming more specific…” (female exclusive e-cigarette user, age 33) •“This [Not Safe statement] just does sound like it's saying ‘hey buy this.’ But this [Harmful statement] says ‘this is going to hurt you, but it's gonna hurt you less.’” (male dual e-cigarette/cigarette user, age 19) •“…it [Harmful statement] says that it's harmful to your health but it's less than…I think that this one [Harmful statement] would make me think a little twice…the one before it [Not Safe statement] I think was letting me know to buy it.” (female dual e-cigarette/cigarette user, age 35)

Note: within each section of table, quotes presented are from unique individuals.

^a“WARNING: This product may be harmful to health, but is substantially less harmful than cigarettes”.

^b“WARNING: No tobacco product is safe, but this product presents substantially lower risks to health than cigarettes”.