Yeah and in this case harm reduction is telling kids not to take nicotine, teaching them why and increasing the difficulty in acquiring nicotine products. Just because it’s futile to stop all nicotine abuse doesn’t make efforts to reduce it not worthwhile. Far more kids drink and smoke underage than do illicit drugs precisely because drugs are harder to get a hold of. The overall impact of reducing everyone’s risk by a moderate amount as opposed to a small group of people’s risk by a large amount is a worthwhile trade off. Yes there is an argument that kids who are doing illicit drugs are endangering themselves so we should legalise and regulate them instead so we know they are doing it “safely.” But, far more people would be doing drugs and causing far more damage if they were legal.

Not to bring up the moral argument of letting products that serve no purpose but to get people to be addicted to them in the first place be sold at all.