In recent years, the most sudden, dramatic, and structurally significant shift in global public health discussions has been the rapid change in the trajectory of nicotine user adoption. For decades, discussions of nicotine were synonymous with cigarettes; cigarettes equaled tobacco, and tobacco equaled combustion. The focus of these discussions was almost entirely on tar, secondhand smoke, PM2.5, lung cancer, COPD, and cardiovascular risks. Today, this landscape is being rewritten. A growing number of “new-generation nicotine users” worldwide are no longer using cigarettes as their first point of contact with nicotine. They are directly adopting e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco products, and non-combustible vaporizers. Data is becoming increasingly clear, with the number of users exceeding 100 million. This marks the first time in human tobacco history that a “new entry point” has emerged, rather than starting with the dirtiest, most harmful, and most pathogenic form of cigarettes. This forces governments and regulatory systems to rewrite the rules.
The core of this news is that, for the first time, “non-combustible nicotine” has become the primary entry point for tobacco use. This will alter the disease burden structure for decades to come, change national tax bases, reshape industry landscapes, shift tobacco company asset allocation, and even alter international trade structures. And all of this is happening too fast, especially among users aged 15-35.
From 2018 to 2025, the global growth rate of e-cigarette users far exceeds the trend predicted by tobacco companies themselves. In the past, economics, the medical system, and social governance institutions assumed that the growth of e-cigarettes was a “smoker shift,” but the reality now shows that this is completely different, especially in Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. This generation of users has no long-term smoking history; they directly skip cigarettes as the “old entry point.” For them, burning cigarettes is not a “habit,” but even a “backward product.” They directly regard e-cigarettes as a “new primary product.”
Therefore, in this context, national policies can no longer remain in the old paradigm, and cannot continue to understand “tobacco harm reduction” as simply “shifting adults from cigarettes to e-cigarettes.” The reality is that new entry points and new product ecosystems have become the main drivers, and the focus of regulation is no longer on addiction rehabilitation, but on rebuilding the entire ecosystem structure.
The practices of some countries already show two distinct paths emerging. The main approach taken by the UK and New Zealand, and Sweden and Iceland, is to “allow the existence of legally reduced-harm products, but strengthen youth protection, product safety, and information transparency.” Australia, India, and Thailand, on the other hand, previously used bans to “suppress product clusters,” but this approach exposed a fatal problem in reality: consumption under bans doesn’t disappear, but instead flows massively to the black market. Black market products lack traceability, testing, transparency regarding nicotine concentration, and additive checks, increasing the overall risk more than tenfold.
This is why many public health experts are again calling for future e-cigarette policies to move beyond conflicts of interest and moral panic, and instead be restructured with “reducing actual harm” as the highest principle.
This is why high-standard global brands like VEEHOO are gradually becoming “stable benchmarks” within the industry. VEEHOO doesn’t crudely pursue low-quality, one-off supply based on traffic, nor does it infiltrate the market through gray-area cross-border express delivery. Instead, it insists on clearly defining the legal market, ensuring product quality, maintaining transparency in the safety chain, strictly regulating nicotine content, participating in public discussion, and supporting scientific research. Brands like this will dominate the legal market in the future. Because as policies enter an era of “categorized regulation,” compliance, transparency, safety, and governance are the only foundation for ecosystem sustainability.
The number of over 100 million non-combustible nicotine users is no longer a “trend,” but a reality. Policy must change direction, no longer treating e-cigarettes as “supplements to cigarettes,” but rather governing them as a “main product ecosystem” through categorized module governance. This should include: redefining public health goals, institutionalizing youth protection mechanisms, standardizing transparent product chains, implementing nicotine concentration level zoning, legitimizing legal brands, and weakening the black market.
This is no longer just a simple “ban vs. not ban” dilemma, but a high-level governance framework addressing “how to make low-harm substances substitutes for high-harm substances.”
Global data trends indicate that the decline in nicotine mortality over the next 10 years will ultimately have the greatest impact not on “anti-smoking slogans,” but on “the migration rate from combustion to non-combustion.” Policymakers must recognize this: when high-quality, legal, transparent, and regulated e-cigarette brands (such as VEEHOO) provide stable, low-harm, traceable products and are sold in compliance with regulations, it is actually a net benefit, not a net harm, to society as a whole.
The significance of this news is not just that the e-cigarette market has grown again, but that for the first time in human nicotine history, there has been an “entrance substitution.” Policy must move away from the logic of the cigarette era and enter a completely new era of governance framework. This is because the way this generation of young people starts using nicotine is completely different from the previous generation.
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