The United States is facing a crisis of its making. A booming underground industry for unregulated, youth-targeted disposable vapes rakes in nearly $2.4 billion annually. Many of these products, primarily imported from China, slip through customs, bypass age restrictions and are designed — intentionally or not — to attract teens with bright packaging and candy-like flavors.
This is a public health emergency. For years, the Food and Drug Administration has made it worse.
Under the FDA, reviews of flavored vapes were effectively frozen. This sidelined responsible U.S.-made products and opened the door for foreign companies with counterfeit products. Of course, youth vaping didn’t go away; it got worse and more dangerous.
Today, illegal flavored disposables account for more than 70 percent of U.S. vape sales. Previous FDA leadership was paralyzed and never established a transparent, fast and fair process to evaluate innovations. Since 2021, the agency has received 27 million premarket tobacco product applications and rejected or ignored most of them, refusing to accept nearly three-quarters of the applications and leaving others in limbo. That inaction fueled an underground industry that punishes compliance and endangers public health.
Thankfully, the tide may be turning. Since January, the FDA leadership has taken meaningful steps toward restoring a science-based regulatory path. The recent authorization of several JUUL menthol and tobacco products signals a long-overdue course correction, and an opportunity to finish what the Trump administration started in 2020 — to protect teens, support smokers, especially those looking to quit combustible cigarettes, and clear the market of illegal vapes.
In May, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called for a crackdown on illegal Chinese vapes and praised U.S. companies building stronger age controls. He’s right. The challenge isn’t stopping bad actors; it’s creating space for good actors to replace them.
The goal of e-cigarettes has always been to give adult smokers a less harmful alternative to combustible cigarettes. For that to work, regulators must stop blocking innovation from responsible U.S. companies and start replacing illicit products with FDA-authorized ones that are secure, science-backed and built with youth protection in mind.
That means regulations that keep up with technology. Today, responsible manufacturers are waiting in the wings with age-verification tools like smartphone-enabled user restrictions, real-time facial recognition and tamper-proof pod security to ensure products reach adults (not teens) and can’t be counterfeited or misused.
We don’t have to choose between protecting kids and supporting smokers. With smart, timely regulation, we can do both. Every month of delay deepens the crisis. Illegal sales grow, and adults looking for safer alternatives are left with fewer, and often riskier, choices. The FDA has a real chance to fix this. That means clearing out unlawful products, streamlining processes to make sure innovative products from U.S. manufacturers reach Americans, and authorizing technology-led solutions that are built to meet today’s realities.
