Treating vaping like smoking is wrong, though. They are nothing alike besides containing nicotine.

And you can't even compare that because the forms of nicotine are different. The one used in modern vapes is only about 12% as bioavailable as the nicotine in tobacco.

Vaping is 95% less harmful, but there's a gigantic misinformation campaign against it. Most studies that show that vaping produces harmful substances either had methodology that was designed to produce harmful results by using the devices in ways humans wouldn't, or the scientific reporting on the study grossly misrepresented the findings to make vapes sound scary.

Public health interventions can do far more than banning! The reason it tooks so long to treat vaping as smoking is the far lesser danger of vaping for health (if you put aside the US studies).