California bans Flavored E-Cigarettes and Online Sales
14th Oct 2024
“Stock up or settle for artificial tobacco flavor” The message was clear from one of California’s many vape producers as the state government passed two new laws set to come into effect January 2025. Vapers face a comprehensive flavor ban, as well as a ban on all online sales and private imports of all nicotine vaping products in California.
Only e-cigarettes and e-liquids with the flavor of artificial tobacco will be allowed on store shelves in California, as of January 1, 2025. Simultaneously, all online sales of products containing nicotine or similar substances will be banned.
The battle for the future of e-cigarettes has been a hot topic in California for a long time. After a prolonged court process, the state recently received a green light to ban all “characterizing” flavors in smoked tobacco, with the exception of cigars, rolling tobacco, and pipe tobacco. Consequently, nicotine vaping products were included in the ban, which effectively meant that e-liquids could only be flavored with essences that somehow mimic tobacco smoke.
“As of today, the few brands and devices approved by the FDA are only available in tobacco and menthol flavors. These products represent 2 maybe 3 percent of the market. The rest is part of a black or grey market. This is the main reason we do not want to get into the vaping sector, even though these products play an important part in reducing the harms of smoking. Just as nicotine pouches do.” says Markus Lindblad, Head of Communications at Pouch Patrol.
While the California government has been planning for its all-covering flavor ban at the state level, some cities, like San Francisco, have already limited flavorings within their city limits on their own mandate. However, a 2022 economic study showed that these bans likely led to increased smoking, particularly among youth. These trends were later confirmed in other studies using comparative sales data. Flavor bans, or other measures intended to reduce the appeal of e-cigarettes, seemed to shift nicotine consumption back to cigarettes. Researcher and professor of health economics Michael Pesko recently published a study on the subject in the Journal of Health Economics.
“This is about substitute products in the same market. It’s reasonable to assume that something that worsens the conditions for one product leads to advantages for competing products. In this case, cigarettes which are a significantly more dangerous product from a risk perspective,” said Michael Pesko at the time of the study’s publication.
Another study conducted by a research team at Yale and the University of Missouri confirmed the economic relationship between flavored e-cigarettes and cigarettes. Here, sales figures were compared before and after a flavor ban was implemented in various cities and states.
“The results showed that e-cigarette sales dropped significantly after a flavor ban. At the same time, cigarette sales increased significantly. For every 7 millilitres of e-liquid not sold, 15 cigarettes were sold,” says Michael Pesko, who led the study funded by NIH.
The sales of nicotine pouches are currently affected by the ban on the state level. Nevertheless, some cities, like San Francisco are currently looking to ban online sales of these products as well. Haypp has, for the time being, shut down all sales in the state of California.
“Our goal is to be compliant in every city, county and state and we follow these matters carefully. We currently have over a million pouch users in San Francisco and we want to get everything right for that reason. But for now, we don’t ship to California at all” says Markus Lindblad.
