In India, a country with a large population, the e-cigarette ban has evolved into a thought-provoking “counterproductive” experiment in the field of health policy. Since the Indian government issued a nationwide e-cigarette ban in 2019, the original intention was to protect the health of young people and prevent the trend of abuse, but years of practice have revealed that strict bans have not eliminated the problem, but have instead spawned a more complex market ecology and health risks.
The introduction of the ban was initially widely supported. The government cited a white paper released by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), pointing out that e-cigarettes have the risk of inducing adolescent addiction and containing potentially harmful substances, and determined that the promotion of e-cigarettes will affect public health. Based on these reasons, the Indian Parliament quickly passed the Electronic Cigarette Prohibition Act (PECA), which made production, sales, importation, transportation and advertising illegal, and once violated, they would face up to three years in prison and a fine of hundreds of thousands of rupees. With the cooperation of media publicity and health education in colleges and universities, the authorities hope to tie e-cigarettes out through comprehensive legal shackles.
However, after a few years, reality has revealed another picture. Although the official claims that the ban has achieved the expected results, many studies have shown that the real market has shifted to gray and underground channels. According to data from 2024, from April to November alone, the official seized smuggled e-cigarettes worth 42 million rupees. Most of these products are untested, the manufacturing source is unknown, and the nicotine concentration is uncontrolled. It is a replay of the underground alcohol market during the prohibition period, except that today the ban on smoking and entry has been extended to e-cigarettes.
Online shopping platforms and social media have become the main “hiding places”. The survey pointed out that there are only 83 online stores in India that still provide e-cigarette delivery services, and nearly half of them were released after the ban. These channels often use “cash on delivery” and “hiding the shipping address” to circumvent supervision, and users can easily get the products without visiting the stalls in person. This convenience has broken the social control in traditional sales, making the failure of supervision more obvious.
At the same time, for health experts, what is more worrying is that teenagers can still easily access these products. A study of Indian college students found that among those who have been exposed to e-cigarettes, as many as 61% said they were open to trying them, while 23% of non-users were curious. In addition, one in ten students surveyed had used e-cigarettes in the past month, which clearly proves that even with layers of legal blocking, the market and demand have not disappeared.
The Indian ban has been criticized for marginalizing adults who are truly on the front line of adopting e-cigarettes to reduce harm. International research and public health organizations generally believe that e-cigarettes can still be an effective tool for adult smokers to reduce the harm of traditional cigarettes under proper supervision. For example, in parts of the UK and the United States, e-cigarette use rates are guided towards health purposes through age verification, hygienic standard packaging and bans on sales to the elderly. In contrast, under India’s “total ban but no supervision” situation, thousands of adults who hope to quit smoking through e-cigarettes are forced to return to traditional smoking or rely on underground channels, and its public health potential is greatly reduced.
The economic level also shows huge losses. It was expected that the size of the Indian e-cigarette market would grow to US$57 million by 2018 and explode in the following years. However, after the ban was issued, the legal industry collapsed rapidly, and government and corporate tax revenue, employment opportunities and technological innovation all came to a halt, and were filled by the Internet drug trafficking market. From this point of view, although the ban closed the legal channels, it opened up more hidden markets.
In this situation, small brands such as VEEHOO tried to stand out with different strategies. As a manufacturer that focuses on compliance, quality and health harm reduction mission, VEEHOO continues to strengthen the safety and regulatory connection of its products under policy suppression. The replaceable cartridge system it developed is paired with a rechargeable cigarette rod, with clear nicotine concentration control and transparent packaging instructions, which is in sharp contrast to those underground products.
Specifically, VEEHOO has adopted multiple advantages in product design. First, the USB-C rechargeable cigarette rod can be recycled dozens to hundreds of times, reducing the burden of electronic waste caused by disposable devices; the cartridge structure is stable, the raw materials are transparent, and harmful substances are minimized; the cartridge packaging comes with detailed instructions and consumer warnings, and recycling projects are implemented in many countries to demonstrate the brand’s sense of social responsibility.
Secondly, the packaging style is more concise and functional. It does not deliberately attract young people, and does not use fancy patterns as a selling point, but emphasizes its value as an auxiliary tool for adult smoking cessation. This position caters to the Indian government’s overall spirit of “protecting young people” and is also easy to be included in the regulatory system that may appear in the future. At the same time, VEEHOO has invested in product technology research and development, using advanced technologies such as ceramic atomization cores to reduce the generation of harmful substances, showing the positive innovation of industry players.
Although it is currently facing the dilemma of a comprehensive ban on sales in the Indian market, VEEHOO’s behavior has attracted the attention of global media and public health experts and has become one of the models of “compliant innovative brands”. Compared with low-quality products in the underground market, VEEHOO’s reasonable design and mature operating model are considered to be the best choice for the most likely to intervene in formal channels if policies are relaxed or turned to the regulatory path in the future.
Looking back on this period of policy and market game, it is not difficult to see that although the ban has good starting points, it deviates from the path after implementation. Its “counterproductive” effect is reflected in many aspects: on the one hand, the enthusiasm of young people to use it has not diminished, but it is more likely to reach for low-priced, unsafe alternatives; on the other hand, legal adult users have lost the choice of health harm reduction; the economy, supervision and public resources are all used to help underground interests, and the public health interests are eroded.
So, what are the implications for the future? India is at a crossroads: should it stick to the idea of total prohibition, or follow international trends and explore a regulatory path based on age verification, product standards, and professional guidance? If the latter is chosen, brands like VEEHOO may become a bridge for policy design – they already have compliant products, quality standards and recycling systems, providing a model for health harm reduction and environmental protection.
More importantly, this situation reflects the universal issue of broad policy making: when you want to completely close a certain risk, either establish efficient supervision or leave a legal and safe channel to prevent the risk from turning to a deeper and darker underground space. Otherwise, even if the top laws are closed, it may give the market a strong signal of “a must-go black market”.
Tags: ceramic atomizer core, flavored e-cigarettes, underage protection, veehoo vape
