For the first time in 20 years, smoking rates are on the rise. That mournful finding ought to be reinvigorating the effort to stamp out cigarettes. Astoundingly, the opposite is happening.

A new tax on nicotine vaping, which Democrats have tried to inject into the Build Back Better bill, would drag more than 2.5 million Americans back to cigarettes, according to National Institutes of Health-funded academic research. And just weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration effectively outlawed nearly all vaping products, though they’ve proven to be the single most effective method to quit smoking ever devised.