Minors are the main attraction to this ban. And why e-cigs? Don't minors smoke cigarettes too? Nobody ever mentions that.
That's the question. And I think there's an answer that you can intuit. It's not stated YET. It's the card up the sleeve...the man behind the curtain...the unstated end game.
They DO care about the smoking thing. In reality. But they have to "make a trade" and also reduce nicotine addiction at the same time. IDK about your country, but here they made cigarettes WORSE. They made them burn funny with "FSC - Fire Safe Cigs" that put glue/knots in the tobacco stick to make them go out if not puffed on. They limit flavorings. They play games with nic and limit advertising. They have scary commercials with people that have had cancer and stuff. No more advertising.
Now e-cigs come along, and they're basically TOO SUCCESSFUL. Kiddies don't smoke much, but they do gravitate towards nic, so now they're vilifying Juul and vaping in general. BT owns Juul now.
So it's about the future and the kids. BUT....here's the ace up the sleeve...they're going to eventually have to get rid of smoking, or make it so damn expensive that you just can't afford $100USD for a pack of smokes. I'm guessing that once BT gets a lock on the market, and drives all the other vape business away....THEN....they will say "we're doing our smoke-free-future" and you use our propriarity devices and vape or heat-not-burn...here you go. But they don't want it TOO successful.
So it's a trade..."We'll give you the nic market, and you can take over the vaping scene and do whatever...but you have to get rid of cigs."
Of course, they can't admit that, or say that, but that's where it's going long term. And it's conspiracy I'm sure rationalized "for the public good". Or at minimum, it's BT being decades ahead in this rigged game.
But you're right, on the face of it, a simple "flavor ban" to "save the children" doesn't make a lot of sense when they can flavor it themselves. That's because the end goal is really a bit bigger than that. It's a trade.
And I'm guessing here. But big-tobacco, big-games, and big-money combine with politics and social engineering to make big-deals.