The Trump administration says it is taking conscious action to block the flow of unregulated Chinese vapes into the country, something Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary described as a direct “attack” on the nation’s youth.
Youth vaping rates exploded after electronic nicotine delivery systems, or ENDS, hit the market in the early 2000s, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention charting a roughly 2,000% increase in the number of teenage vapers from 2011 to 2019. And while youth usage rates have slowly decreased over the past five years, CDC data show that, in 2024, more than 1.63 million middle school and high school students reported using e-cigarettes daily.
And industry experts say a disproportionate share are using ENDS products manufactured in China and then smuggled into the United States.
Makary, who leads the FDA, told the Washington Examiner Friday that the administration is specifically looking to end the “port shopping” of incoming black market vape shipments.
“When I came into office, what I learned is that we were just sending them back to the manufacturer, who would put them on a ship, and they would go to the next U.S. port, something called port shopping,” he explained. “They’re laughing at us because the FDA can only get through two to five percent of products that come into our ports, so basically 100% of the stuff was getting in. It was a porous border. So we’re taking action to look at confiscating and destroying these products.”
In 2022, China outlawed the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, but Makary and industry experts claim that the unregulated products often target children and teenagers with flavored e-cigarettes, brightly decorated products, and more.
Makary told the Washington Examiner that the FDA has even begun confiscating “video games that are vaping devices.”
“They have an inhalation port in the device. So they’re designed to get children addicted, so they can get addicted to the video game and the vaping product at the same time,” he concluded. “This is a threat. If another country did this to the United States, as is happening right now, we would say this is an attack.”
Chinese producers are believed to control anywhere between 70% and 90% of America’s black market vape trade. Polaris National Security, a think tank founded by the deputy U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, Morgan Ortagus, published a report last month predicting that Chinese manufacturers will reach $200 billion in annual illicit vape sales by 2030.
And in recent weeks, President Donald Trump has been lobbied by activists on both sides of the aisle, both inside and outside of government, to address black market Chinese vapes, as reported by the Washington Examiner.
Trump has dabbled in vaping politics. In 2019, he proposed a ban on selling flavored e-cigarettes to deter rising teenage vaping. He then slowed the rollout and eventually amended the proposed rule in 2020, allowing manufacturers to circumvent the ban by going through a premarket tobacco application process.
He also signed a bill into law raising the federal minimum age for purchasing all tobacco products, including vapes, from 18 to 21. And on the 2024 campaign trail, Trump injected himself into the debate, repeatedly vowing to “save vaping.”
TRUMP FACING BIPARTISAN PRESSURE TO CRACK DOWN ON CHINESE VAPES
“I saved Flavored Vaping in 2019, and it greatly helped people get off smoking. I raised the age to 21, keeping it away from the ‘kids.’ Kamala and Joe want everything banned, killing small businesses all over the Country,” the president said in a September 2024 post on Truth Social. “I’ll save Vaping again!”
