The Public Health (Single-Use Vapes) Bill 2025 completed Ireland’s parliamentary process at the Oireachtas on July 7. It currently awaits the signature of President Catherine Connolly, which is expected to be a mere formality. Retailers will be given a six-month period to shift existing products, with the new law taking full effect in January 2027. 

“By banning single-use vapes, we are helping to prevent nicotine addiction before it starts and creating a cleaner environment for everyone,” said Health Minister Carroll MacNeil, echoing talking points that have driven disposable vape bans in countries such as the United Kingdom.

The new ban is only part of Ireland’s wider crackdown on nicotine vapes. In 2025, for instance, the country imposed the European Union’s highest tax rate on e-liquids. 

Meanwhile, the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) (Amendment) Bill 2026, introduced earlier in the year, seeks to further restrict safer nicotine products that have helped millions quit smoking. Ireland’s smoking rate of about 18 percent remains vastly higher than the government’s target of below 5 percent—which it was supposed to reach by 2025.

“This now looks certain to go through, with little pushback from the opposition.”

That bill would limit vape flavors to tobacco or unflavored e-liquids only. It would additionally restrict colors and imagery on devices and packaging, and ban retail outlets from advertising nicotine products, among other measures. It would give ministers the power to regulate flavor descriptors and to amend the law to cover any future nicotine products.

Having recently passed the lower house, the bill is due to be debated in the upper house, the Seanad, later in July. An EU notification process would need to be completed before it can be enacted, but the government plans for it to take effect before the end of 2026.

“This now looks certain to go through, with little pushback from the opposition apart from [political party] Sinn Fein,” Tom Gleeson, a trustee of the New Nicotine Alliance Ireland charity, told Filter. 

“This move by the health minister will result in the first minister for health to leave office with a higher rate of smoking than when they took office,”said Gleeson, who credits vapes with helping him quit smoking. “Given the clear evidence that restrictions on reduced-harm products benefit smoking, it’s puzzling that they are willing to take that risk.”

“The lack of support for vaping from our health bodies has already reduced the impact of safer products on smoking rates,” he continued, “with Ireland lagging behind places like our close neighbors in the United Kingdom.”

In the UK, most people who quit smoking do so with the help of vapes. Though politicians there have also turned against tobacco harm reduction in recent years, the country has a prior track record of embracing it. The UK now has a significantly lower smoking rate than Ireland, and Brits are more likely to vape than to smoke.

Dr. Garrett McGovern, an Irish addiction medicine specialist and tobacco harm reduction advocate, told Filter that “flavors are an essential component of helping smokers quit”—an assertion that’s supported by substantial evidence. 

“They have not considered the unintended consequences: increased smoking rates across the age spectrum and a burgeoning illicit market.”

McGovern described the current bill as a “missed opportunity.” It makes the assumption, he continued, that a “so-called youth epidemic” of vaping entails harms that are somehow comparable to those caused by cigarettes. This is not true. 

In reality, McGovern said, “youth e-cigarette use is experimental, transient and in the vast majority of cases unproblematic, and not a gateway to cigarette smoking. Despite this, policymakers have decided that vaping is the enemy and needs to be eradicated.” 

The Healthy Ireland Survey 2025 found that 50 percent of Irish people who vape formerly smoked and have now quit combustible tobacco entirely. Another 33 percent vape and smoke—so-called “dual use,” which typically involves reducing the number of cigarettes smoked, and is often part of a journey to complete smoking cessation. 

Just 17 percent of people who vape in Ireland have never smoked—and even with them, there’s the question of what they would be doing if vapes weren’t available, given evidence of “common liability” to both vaping and smoking. 

When the most effective smoking-cessation aids are made not only more expensive but less visible and less enjoyable, advocates say that damaging outcomes are inevitable.

“They have not considered the unintended consequences: increased smoking rates across the age spectrum and a burgeoning illicit market to fill the void left by the unregulated one,” McGovern said.

Photograph (cropped) by Ecig Click via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Disposables Banned, Flavors Next: Irish Vape Crackdown Gathers Pace appeared first on Filter.

The UK controversially banned sales of single-use e-cigarettes on June 1. A recent investigation claims that almost one in four retailers are breaking the law by continuing to sell them.

The investigation was carried out by Haypp, an online nicotine retailer. “We’re not surprised about the results,” Markus Lindbald, the company’s head of Legal & External Affairs, told Filter.

The investigation involved mystery shoppers visiting 48 stores in nine UK cities from June 2-6. These included independent vape shops, large retailers and small corner shops. Glasgow and London were found to have the highest concentrations of retailers willing to sell the now-illegal products. Though it was mostly independent vape shops, at least one major national convenience store in Birmingham also sold a disposable vape to a mystery shopper.

“Just max it out because we will not enforce it!”

Haypp has said the number of retailers continuing to sell disposables could actually be a lot higher. And of course, the investigation didn’t account for illicit sales outside of retail outlets. The company conducted a previous survey in 2024, finding “widespread confusion” over the impending ban and alternative products available, which prompted the recent investigation.

Lindbald said every new regulation should be accompanied by clear plans, responsibilities and funding for enforcement. Instead, he suggested, the government’s message to businesses is, “There is always an opportunity to increase your profit and revenue by not following the laws—just max it out because we will not enforce it!”

Retailers were getting around the ban by accepting cash only, not providing receipts and selling disposables in bulk packages rather than individually, he said.

Haypp had a commercial motive for carrying out the investigation, when it views illicit disposables as unfair competition.

“I don’t get why all UK compliant online retailers and Haypp, the most compliant online retailers, should be punished just because we are following the laws,” Lindbald said. “We have right from the beginning stated that the disposables are not a long-term sustainable solution.”

David Donaghy, head of creative marketing at Riot, another company that sells vaping products, has a similar view. “Retailers who continue to push disposable devices undermine the intent of the ban and disregard the opportunity to offer consumers better options,” he told Filter.

The UK government banned disposables because they were blamed for youth use and environmental harm. But many tobacco harm reduction advocates opposed the ban, on the basis that disposables are a vital low-barrier option—easy to use, and with low start-up costs—for predominantly marginalized people to switch from smoking.

“It costs and looks exactly the same as the disposable ones, but the shop didn’t even sell refill pods. So when that one runs out, I’ll be disposing of it.”

Plenty of data illustrate disposables’ ability to reduce cigarette sales, while better recycling options and adherence to existing age restrictions could mitigate the concerns, advocates argued.

They further predicted that the ban would boost illicit markets, which are more likely to operate without consumer protections or age verification. Research from Action on Smoking and Health has indicated that the majority of underage vapers will keep vaping after the ban; of that group, 44 percent say they’ll try to obtain illicit disposables.

Back in May, an analysis by the Association of Convenience Stores, an organization representing retailers, reported that not enough funding had been made available to meaningfully enforce the disposables ban.

One British consumer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had stockpiled disposables before the ban was enacted but had just bought his first alternative product, which amounted to a workaround.

“It costs and looks exactly the same as the disposable ones, but the shop didn’t even sell refill pods,” he told Filter. “So, when that one runs out, I’ll be disposing of it, responsibly, and buying another one.”

The ban “is completely ill-prepared and lacks any thought,” he added. “Introducing policies without working out the tangible impacts screams of lip service without real intent.”

“The government took products used by 2.6 million adults as alternatives to smoking and just banned them, with little more than wishful thinking that it would work well.”

Demand for disposables persists. A new survey conducted by the Scottish Grocers’ Federation (SGF) found that 31 percent of retailers are being asked for disposable vapes at least once a day, with another 18 percent saying it happens at least weekly. The SGF blamed poor public awareness and confusion over “the changeover to refillable and rechargeable vapes.”

British tobacco harm reduction expert Clive Bates, of Counterfactual Consulting, said it’s too soon to know exactly how the ban will play out. 

“But the government took products used by 2.6 million adults as alternatives to smoking and just banned them, with little more than wishful thinking that it would work well,” he told Filter. “What did they think would happen?”

Photograph by Filter

The post Disposable Vapes Still Widely (and Predictably) Sold in Post-Ban UK appeared first on Filter.

Projections of the policy’s other effects meanwhile vary from showing large numbers of vapers switching back to deadly cigarettes, to little impact on youth vaping—the major rationale for the disposables ban in the first place.

Altogether, many experts deem the policy to be as pointless or counterproductive as it is unenforceable.

“The British government has woefully underestimated the resources needed to enforce the disposable ban, effectively making a rod for their own back,” Mark Oates, director of the consumer advocacy group We Vape, told Filter.

Oates referenced analysis from the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS), an organization representing retailers. The group looked at the resources needed to enforce the ban that takes effect on June 1. It found that of the £30 million per year the government has allocated to target illicit trade over the next five years, only £10 million per year is allocated to Trading Standards.

That £10 million “equates to between £30,000 and £50,000 per authority in England, barely enough to fund one additional enforcement officer in each area,” the report states. It’s only a third of the funds that would be required to meaningfully enforce the new law, the group estimates.

In this context, ACS Chief Executive James Lowman told Filter that the illicit vapes market is set to “receive a boost” as the disposables ban takes effect.

In the past three years, Trading Standards officers have reportedly seized more than 6 million illegal vaping products in England alone. Yet it’s been reported that just 80 apprentice Trading Standards officers have been recruited to enforce the new ban.

The unregulated vapes market is already growing in the UK, with attendant risks to consumers.

“They are creating a Russian doll of absurdities, which will not end well,” Bates said of the government.

Back in 2023, the prominent charity Action on Smoking and Health (UK) stated that while it was “sympathetic” to calls for a disposables ban on youth-vaping and environmental grounds, it could not support the policy because the illicit market “will be turbo-charged.”

Unregulated vapes have “been found to contain all sorts of toxic chemicals banned in legal products, and there’s no way to ensure they’re properly recycled,” ASH stated.

The charity has since shifted its position, however, welcoming the confirmation of the ban when it came in October 2024, though with some reservations.

Tobacco harm reduction expert Clive Bates, of Counterfactual Consulting, believes that many people will return to smoking under the ban. He noted that an impact assessment from the government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in late 2024 found that 29 percent of people who currently vape would do so.

The prospect of ending legal access to low-barrier harm reduction options with low startup costs, which will remain available illegally, has “created conditions for a massive black market,” he told Filter.

“They are creating a Russian doll of absurdities, which will not end well,” Bates said of the government.

Some also fear violence associated with struggles for control of a lucrative illicit trade. “We only need to look at Australia, where firebombings and murder are the tools of the trade for biker gangs running the vaping black market, to see where this ban could lead,” Oates said.

Jack Rankin, a member of parliament for the opposition Conservative Party, and part of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Responsible Vaping, has similarly stated that, “With no proper resources or plan to monitor the market, underworld operators will move quickly to usher in a new era of criminal enterprise in vaping products.”

Golden told Filter she’s “disappointed” by a lack of government messaging around “behavior change” as the ban approaches, to help ensure that people using disposables don’t resume smoking.

New research from University College London (UCL) has meanwhile found that the imminent ban, as retailers pull disposables from shelves, has already kick-started changes to consumer behavior in both adults and youth.

The proportion of vapers aged 16-24 who mainly use disposables dropped by almost half in the past year, the study found, from 63 percent to 35 percent. But the researchers believe this group has mainly migrated to refillable models, rather than quitting. With this in mind, lead author Dr. Sarah Jackson concluded that the ban may have  “limited impact” on vaping rates, including youth vaping.

That’s a rosier picture than the DEFRA projection of a large-scale return to cigarettes. But the UCL study also found that total vaping prevalence among British adults stayed flat in the year ending January 2025, after rising rapidly before then. Other research has found that smoking cessation has stalled in England since 2020.

A chilling effect from negative messaging on vapes surrounding the disposables ban could be playing a role here.

Gillian Golden, CEO of the Independent British Vape Trade Association, told Filter she’s “disappointed” by a lack of government messaging around “behavior change” as the ban approaches, to help ensure that people using disposables don’t resume smoking.

“Adult consumers should be informed that alternatives to single-use products are available, and are usually more cost-effective,” Golden said.

Photograph by Filter

The post The UK’s Impending Disposable Vapes Ban Looks Unenforceable appeared first on Filter.

Belgium’s health minister, Frank Vandenbroucke, previously used an array of familiar arguments as justification for the move. He branded disposables “extremely harmful,” and said they produce “hazardous waste chemicals.” He described them as designed to get “new consumers” addicted to nicotine—a substance, he said, which is “bad for your health.”

Yet Belgium’s smoking rate has declined substantially in the period when disposable nicotine vapes, among others, have been available and popular. Vapes are demonstrated to facilitate smoking cessation, as the Belgian government acknowledges when it comes to refillable products.

Proponents of disposables as harm reduction tools note that nicotine is not the cause of smoking-related disease and death, while disposables’ ease of use and low start-up costs make them a particularly accessible way to switch from cigarettes, especially for low-income populations.

“Public health is gaining massive wins but the public perception is that we are creating whole new generations of nicotine addicts.”

Environmental concerns can be addressed by better recycling provision and development of more sustainable products, they argue; the cigarettes that vapes replace also have environmental impacts. Youth uptake is widely exaggerated, they add, but can be mitigated by better implementation of existing age restrictions.

“’Youth epidemic’ is all we ever hear about, even though nicotine usage is the lowest in decades amongst teens,” Tim Jacobs, a vape consumer who owns a vape manufacturing, distribution and retail business in Belgium, told Filter. “Public health is gaining massive wins [because of vapes] but the public perception is that we are creating whole new generations of nicotine addicts with safer nicotine products.”

Belgium has a goal of reaching “smoke-free” status—less than 5 percent of the population smoking—by 2040. Despite this, the country already banned online sales of vapes in 2016, and more restrictions could be in the pipeline.

Though the disposables ban only just came into force, a new government report shows that many vape sellers, particularly in the capital, Brussels, aren’t complying. This has resulted in one lawmaker, MP Els Van Hoof, calling for the ban to expand to all non-tobacco flavors, which, she said, “make vaping seem enjoyable and healthy.” She submitted a bill to do this, which Belgium’s Chamber of Representatives is currently reviewing.

Most adults who switch from cigarettes find non-tobacco vape flavors most helpful in doing so. Enjoyment, tobacco harm reduction experts say, is central to getting more people to adopt the healthier option.

“The anti-vaping voices are always saying the product is targeted at younger people with all flashy flavors,” commented Jacobs, who lives in Antwerp. “However, why do we have an age restriction then? Everything starts with a proper enforcement of that.”

Vandenbroucke has described Belgium as “playing a pioneering role to weaken the tobacco lobby,” and urged the rest of the EU to follow suit. Momentum is on his side.

Belgium also banned nicotine pouches in 2023, though they reportedly remain available in many shops. So it’s been a series of blows to safer nicotine products, despite repeated evidence of their importance for people looking to quit smoking.

Vandenbroucke has nonetheless described Belgium as “playing a pioneering role in Europe to weaken the tobacco lobby,” and urged the rest of the EU to follow suit.

Momentum is on his side. In the past year, EU bodies have called for vaping in public spaces to be banned, and discussed a potential bloc-wide ban on flavors in safer nicotine products.

In terms of individual EU countries, Ireland and France are both set to ban disposables, and they are among at least 12 nations calling for more vape restrictions.

Meanwhile the United Kingdom, a former EU member, will also ban disposables starting in June. A new study—“England’s disposable vape ban: An inadequate solution to youth vaping with potential unintended consequences”—has criticized that impending prohibition.

“A ban may protect the environment but, alone, is unlikely to substantially reduce youth vaping and may have unintended consequences,” the authors noted, including “a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged groups that have higher rates of smoking and typically find it harder to quit.” They called for policies that better balance the desire to reduce youth vaping with the need “to ensure that affordable and accessible smoking cessation support, including vapes, remain available.”

Whether other EU countries implement their own disposables bans like Belgium could soon become a moot point. The EU Batteries Regulation, adopted in 2023 and expected to take effect in 2027, states that batteries in portable devices must be removable and replaceable by users. Disposable vapes do not meet that requirement.

So their availability across the EU—at least legally, when bans boost illicit markets without consumer protections or age restrictions—is under imminent threat.

Photograph by Wesley Fryer via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Belgium’s Disposable Vapes Ban Could Be First of Many appeared first on Filter.

The previous Conservative government had announced a disposables ban in January, but then lost the national election in July. On October 23, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), under the new Labour government, confirmed that people will not be able to legally purchase single-use vapes from June 1, 2025. The move applies to England, but the governments of Scotland and Wales have said they will match it.

DEFRA said that retailers should “sell any remaining stock they hold and prepare for the ban coming into force.”

“Banning disposable vapes will not only protect the environment, but importantly reduce the appeal of vapes to children and keep them out of the hands of vulnerable young people,” said Health Minister Andrew Gwynne, as the Guardian reported.

But tobacco harm reduction advocates say the government is ignoring the many adults who rely on these inexpensive, simple devices to quit and then stay off cigarettes.

For low-income communities, “vapes, and especially disposables, are a really important weapon in the battle against smoking.”

DEFRA cited a 400 percent increase in use of vapes from 2012-2023. But Clive Bates, of Counterfactual Consulting, sees this as evidence of their importance. “The market tells us they matter to consumers,” he told Filter.

“About nine times as many adults use disposables compared to adolescents,” he noted, and “most adults will be using these products as alternatives to smoking.”  

Any serious public health approach should focus on the high number of adults in poorer communities who smoke cigarettes, Bates continued. “For them, vapes, and especially disposables, are a really important weapon in the battle against smoking.”

David Mackintosh, a director of the organization Knowledge-Action-Change, which works on tobacco harm reduction, similarly noted low-income populations’ high smoking rates. “We need products people can afford, and which are not complicated or fiddly,” he told Filter.

A recent survey from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) showed that more than half of Brits who quit smoking in the past five years used vapes to help them do so. ASH has previously opposed a disposables ban on the basis that it would “turbo-charge” illicit sales, which take place without consumer protections or age restrictions.

Bates agreed that he now expects “more smoking, more illicit trade, more innovative workarounds that will leave the authorities flat-footed, and finally no recycling schemes or age-secure retailing.”

The environmental impact of single-use vapes has been a consistent point of opposition to them. Libby Peake of Green Alliance, a think tank and charity, was among those welcoming the government’s ban on “extremely wasteful” disposables, calling them “the last thing our children and the planet need.”

The nonprofit Material Focus, concerned with recycling electrical goods, meanwhile estimates that 5 million single-use vapes are trashed each week in the UK, “creating a staggering amount of waste.”

If predictions of a burgeoning illicit market are correct, however, the ban won’t eliminate that problem, as Material Focus recognized, asking in a statement shared with Filter, “Who will pay for takeback and recycling of illegal vapes?” Currently, shops that sell legal vapes are required to offer facilities to take them back for recycling, although many do not.

Richard Pruen began giving disposables to friends who smoked and were unwilling to spend money on more expensive vape starter kits.

But it’s the role of accessible and affordable devices as a critical first step to leaving cigarettes behind that most concerns Richard Pruen.

Having “accidentally” quit smoking through vapes himself, Pruen wanted to help others do the same, he told Filter. So he began giving disposables to friends of his who smoked and were unwilling to spend money on more expensive vape starter kits.

A disposable represents “a small price to pay,” he said, for somebody who smokes and is not yet ready to commit to vaping. “If they find them ok, I advise them to get a refillable pod device or tank if they like.”

There’s also the issue of the public message the disposables ban will send about vaping in general.

“The government needs to be careful that they don’t fuel the disinformation out there about risk,” Mackintosh said. “Messaging matters.”

The UK has long been regarded as a tobacco harm reduction (THR) success story, with an innovative national scheme to provide free vapes to people who smoke, pro-vaping advice from health authorities, and millions of people having already switched.

But with the disposables ban, the prospect of the government’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill restricting flavors, and potential for higher taxation on vapes in the autumn budget, is the country now losing that reputation?

“By international standards the UK still has a pretty good story to tell about its response to smoking, including THR, but there is room to do so much more,” Mackintosh said.

“If the UK is to achieve its 2030 ‘smoke-free’ ambition, we need to embrace the opportunities offered by THR,” he continued, “and be very clear when talking about relative risks and the benefits of swapping to safer nicotine products.” 

Photograph by Beth via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post The UK Will Ban Disposable Vapes From June 2025 appeared first on Filter.

Earlier in August, the World Vapers’ Alliance warned that the ban, advanced in the name of reducing youth vaping, “could undermine the progress made.”

The policy, which the government first announced in March and plans to have in place by the end of the year, applies to the manufacture, import and sale of all non-rechargeable devices and non-refillable pods and cartridges.

New Zealand’s embrace of vapes has been key to the rapid reduction of its smoking rate to 6.8 percent by 2023—close to the “smoke-free” threshold of below 5 percent. But many of the people who switched from cigarettes have been using devices that will now be banned.

To tobacco harm reduction advocates, it all feels like one step forward, one step back. They recently applauded the government for a move to slash taxes on heated tobacco products—increasing the prospect of those safer substitutes for cigarettes adding to the smoking-cessation momentum generated by vapes.

“The ban on non-refillable e-liquid pods and cartridges directly undermines a product characteristic that helped make vaping popular and effective.”

“With New Zealand so close to achieving its goal of 5 percent or below smoking prevalence by 2025, it seems premature to start attacking the efficacy of vape products,” Dr. Marewa Glover, a behavioral scientist and tobacco harm reduction advocate in New Zealand, told Filter.

She called the ban decision “surprising,” as “it goes against the new government’s commitment to supporting adults to stop smoking.”

“The ban on non-refillable e-liquid pods and cartridges directly undermines a product characteristic that helped make vaping one of the most popular and effective aids to stopping smoking,” Glover continued. “For risk-reduced products to effectively substitute and displace cigarettes, they must be cheaper than cigarettes and at least as convenient and satisfying to buy and use.”

Recent evidence from the United States underlines the importance of such characteristics. An industry report attributed much of the recent decline in cigarette sales to the rise of unregulated disposable vapes, which have not been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.

“No one gets it right,” British tobacco harm reduction advocate Clive Bates, of Counterfactual Consulting, told Filter. “Every country, even the supposed leaders, does something wrong or counterproductive—it’s all a muddle of bans, restrictions, misinformation and taxation.”

“Nowhere in the world are we close to the frontier of optimum policy.”

Among those “supposed leaders,” the United Kingdom has helped promote mass smoking cessation with vapes—yet is set to introduce new powers to restrict flavors and a new vape tax. It also bans snus sales.

Sweden is approaching “smoke-free” status thanks to snus—yet effectively bans high-strength nicotine vapes under EU regulations.

And Japan has seen an unprecedented decline in cigarette sales amid widespread uptake of heated tobacco products—yet bans the sale of nicotine vapes.

“Nowhere in the world are we close to the frontier of optimum policy,” Bates said of these policy contradictions in places that have most benefited from tobacco harm reduction.

He even added that “no country has a regulatory regime for vapes and other safer nicotine products that is better than no vape regulation at all. I have seen very little that improves on the general consumer protection and marketing regulation that applies to most products in most countries.”

Speaking of New Zealand, Bates said he was “disappointed that a government that stood out for standing up to the prohibitionists and Puritans should succumb to pressure to ban disposable vapes.”

“This hasty response to the moral panic surrounding youth vaping threatens to undermine New Zealand’s otherwise exemplary success.”

Dr. Colin Mendelsohn, a tobacco harm reduction advocate in Australia, has monitored the harms of a prescription-only vape policy there. He recently compared Australia’s failures with New Zealand’s successes in an article for Filter. But he told Filter that New Zealand is making a “serious mistake” by banning disposables.

“This hasty response to the moral panic surrounding youth vaping threatens to undermine New Zealand’s otherwise exemplary success in tobacco control,” Mendelsohn said, urging New Zealand to learn from Australia’s mistakes.

Mendelsohn’s article pointed out that while youth vaping is relatively high in New Zealand, the increase largely occurred before vapes were regulated there. Youth smoking—by far the bigger public health concern—declined more rapidly as vaping increased.

Whether the ban derails New Zealand’s goal of reaching “smoke-free” status by 2025 remains to be seen. But tobacco harm reduction experts are united in believing that things won’t now go as well as they would have done.

New Zealand’s policymakers, Mendelsohn warned, “must reconsider this approach carefully.”

Photograph (cropped) by Jeffrey via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

Both The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, and the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking, founded by Dr. Glover, have received grants from Global Action to End Smoking (formerly the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World). 

The post Disposable Vape Ban Threatens New Zealand’s “World Leader” Status appeared first on Filter.

“The greatest part of the decline in use of lethal cigarettes is attributed to movement to disposable vaping products and nicotine pouch products like Zyn,” Sweanor, advisory board chair of the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics, and a longtime nicotine-industry observer, told Filter.

“Altria specially attributes much of the fall in cigarette sales to the rise of disposables,” he emphasized.

That’s a fascinating takeaway, when disposable vapes have been the focus of controversy both within and outside the US. Opponents say the accessibility and single-use nature of the devices lead to underage vaping and environmental harm. Proponents say that disposables’ ease of use and low startup cost compared to other vape systems makes them a critical low-barrier option for people switching from cigarettes, and call for more recycling.

“Consumers are moving away from lethal cigarettes in extraordinary numbers and are doing it despite obstructionist regulations and massive misinformation.”

According to data presented by Altria, 11.7 million people—a sizable majority of an estimated 18.6 million US adults who vape—are now using disposables. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized only four disposable vaping products. Countless others are nonetheless widely sold in many flavors, causing Altria to title its slide “Illicit Products Driving E-Vapor Category Growth.”

“In their presentation, Altria stated ‘illicits’ now comprise 60 percent of the [vape] market,” Sweanor commented. “Consumers are moving away from lethal cigarettes in extraordinary numbers and are doing it despite obstructionist regulations and massive misinformation.”

The data on overall vaping and smoking numbers look extremely promising for public health. Altria’s total of 18.6 million adults vaping has surged from 15.5 million one year ago, and 13.0 million two years ago.

As tobacco harm reduction advocates would expect, cigarette sales are simultaneously falling fast. Altria’s data put the industry-wide rate of decline in cigarette sales at 9.5 percent in the second quarter (and 8.5 percent for the first half of 2024).

“The company attributes a 1.9 percent decline in cigarette sales to price elasticity—the companies continue to raise prices aggressively—and a total decline of between 3 and 4 percent due to consumers moving from cigarettes to alternatives,” Sweanor explained.

The report states that this “cross category movement” is “primarily driven by illicit disposable e-vapor products.” That’s reflected in how rapidly the estimated proportion of disposable use among adult vapers (currently 11.7 million out of 18.6 million) has grown.

One year ago, just under half of adult vapers (7.7 million out of 15.5 million) were using disposables; two years ago (4.9 million out of 13.0 million), the proportion was substantially lower.

Altria, which sells FDA-authorized vaping products manufactured by its subsidiary NJOY, resents this disruptive competition from unauthorized manufacturers. But Sweanor is unimpressed by the response to disposables from large companies and other entities.

“The effort by Altria, other cigarette companies, the FDA, anti-tobacco groups and others to try to close down the disposable market rather than learn from it and make better consumer offers is very concerning,” he said.

Tobacco companies including Altria have supported so-called PMTA registry bills in different states. These promote enforcement of the FDA’s vape-authorization decisions—seeking to restrict sales to the small number of FDA-authorized products, rather than allow continuation of the huge gray market for unauthorized vapes.

“Public health measures are effective when we work with, rather than seek to coerce, consumers.”

Critics see this as an attempt by big companies to dominate the market at the expense of valuable options, including a wide range of flavors, for people seeking to quit smoking.

Many also view the FDA’s heavily criticized premarket tobacco product applications (PMTA) process as so onerous and expensive that it was always stacked in favor of companies with the deepest pockets.

Millions of PMTA applications have been rejected, and all of the current FDA-authorized products are manufactured by tobacco companies or their subsidiaries. The FDA, many advocates have said, has essentially created today’s large unregulated market.

Altria’s report shows with great clarity how consumers are choosing to quit cigarettes, Sweanor said, but “the company is backing efforts to try to remove from the market the products that have been replacing cigarettes.”

“Public health measures are effective when we work with, rather than seek to coerce, consumers,” he warned. Meanwhile, “trying to enforce laws that are undermining public health will cause great harm—not least to the credibility of government authorities.”

Asked to comment on these criticisms, an Altria representative pointed Filter to recent remarks by CEO William F. Gifford, speaking on the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Gifford said the vape market “continues to be overrun by illicit disposable products due to a lack of effective regulation and enforcement.” He applauded how, “in June, the Justice Department and the FDA announced the creation of a federal multi-agency task force, which is expected to coordinate and streamline efforts to bring all available criminal and civil tools to bear against the illegal distribution and sale of e-vapor products.”

“As we’ve stated in the past,” Gifford concluded, “regulation without enforcement is indistinguishable from no regulation at all.”

Most tobacco harm reduction advocates would probably agree with Sweanor that enforcement efforts against products people are currently using to quit cigarettes will do more harm than good. But they also want to see a much larger, more varied regulated vape market—with appropriate consumer protections—than the FDA has so far permitted. 

There might, then, be some common ground with another Altria statement the representative highlighted: “We believe the best way to avert the threat of illicit markets is with harm reduction policies that satisfy adult tobacco consumer demand within the regulated system. That means the FDA must accelerate authorizations of smoke-free alternatives to meet adult smoker demand and policymakers must oppose broad-based bans …”

Altria’s second-quarter report also pointed to growing vape-market share for NJOY. In 2022, before its 2023 acquisition by Altria, NJOY received FDA authorization for vaping products including two disposable products. Then in June 2024, NJOY menthol products, including two disposable products, became the first ever non-tobacco flavored vaping products to receive authorization.

“Consumers are telling us how they want to get away from cigarettes. We should listen to them and facilitate that transition.”

To Sweanor, a mass shift from cigarettes to vapes, unregulated or not, is to be celebrated—and companies should learn from, rather than resist, how it’s happening.

“This is a consumer-led movement facilitated by innovative technology,” he said. ”Publicly listed companies have an obligation to convey truthful information to the markets, and we should be paying attention to what is being reported to shareholders.”

“The urban theorist Jane Jacobs wrote that we should look at footsteps in a park after a snowfall, because that tells us where people wish to go, and we should then plan our walking paths accordingly,” Sweanor concluded. “Consumers are telling us how they want to get away from cigarettes. We should listen to them and facilitate that transition.”

Photograph by Vaping360 via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

Correction, August 19: This article has been edited to remove an earlier statement that the FDA has authorized no disposable vaping products. The agency has in fact authorized four disposable NJOY products.

The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, has received unrestricted grants from Altria Client Services. Filter’s Editorial Independence Policy applies.

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