Consumer Data Rights: Who Owns the Information About Your Nicotine Use?
Your nicotine consumption data—what you use, when, how much—is being collected by manufacturers, retailers, and apps. You don't own it. You can't access it. And it may be used against you. The consumer data rights movement hasn't reached nicotine yet.
Every time you buy a vaping product online, the retailer records what you bought, when, and at what price. Every time you use a connected vaping device, the manufacturer collects data on your consumption patterns, your device settings, and—potentially—your location. Every time you use a smoking cessation app, the app developer collects data on your quit attempts, your cravings, and your relapses. **Your nicotine consumption data is being collected, aggregated, and monetized—and you have almost no rights over it. The consumer data rights movement has not reached nicotine. Your nicotine data is not protected by HIPAA, not covered by comprehensive privacy legislation, and not within your control to access, correct, or delete.**
**The sensitivity of nicotine data is underestimated.** Nicotine use is stigmatized. Information about your nicotine consumption—that you smoke, that you vape, that you've tried to quit and failed—could be used by insurers to increase premiums, by employers to make hiring or promotion decisions, by lenders to assess creditworthiness. The data that reveals your nicotine use also reveals patterns that are correlated with other health conditions, other behaviors, other risks. **Nicotine data is health data—among the most sensitive categories of personal information. And it is currently governed by almost no regulatory protections.**
**A nicotine data rights framework would include several elements.** Ownership: your data belongs to you, not to the company that collected it. Access: you have the right to see what data has been collected about you, to correct errors, and to delete data that you no longer want stored. Consent: your data cannot be collected, shared, or sold without your explicit, informed consent—not buried in a terms-of-service agreement. Portability: you can take your data with you—from one product to another, from one provider to another. **These rights are not radical. They are the standard framework for consumer data protection in other sensitive domains—health, finance, children's data. They have not been extended to nicotine. They should be.**
**💬 Are you aware of what data is being collected about your nicotine use—by the products you use, the retailers you buy from, the apps on your phone? Does it concern you? What rights do you think you should have over that data?**
