Mexico’s nationwide ban on the sale of electronic cigarettes has had an immediate ripple effect across the market, according to shop owners, lawyers and researchers who say legal sellers have been pushed out and organized crime has been able to consolidate control. The ban took effect Jan. 16, and it arrived after years of shifting legal and policy decisions over whether vaping devices should be restricted, with Mexico’s Supreme Court playing a role in revisiting earlier actions.
In the northern part of the country, one vape shop owner who now lives in the United States described a cartel visit in early 2022—when electronic cigarettes were still legal—after cartels sought leverage over businesses selling vapes. The owner said cartel members abducted two employees, blindfolded them and demanded to speak with the store’s bosses, telling the owners they were seizing the store and that sales would be permitted only through online channels outside the state. “They don’t come asking whether you want to (give them your business) or not, they come telling you what’s about to happen,” the owner said on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Zara Snapp, director of the Mexico-based Ría Institute, said the policy change would likely make the market less regulated. “By banning it, you’re handing the market to non-state groups,” Snapp said, pointing to corruption and violence in areas where cartels already operate. Shop owners and policy researchers also argued that the enforcement vacuum and the sudden removal of legal supply can create space for unregulated products, including those associated with criminal distribution.
Lawyer Alejandro Rosario, who represents many vape shops, said the ban also risks giving cartels an additional revenue channel. Rosario said cartels could benefit because vaping devices are still legal in the United States, which he described as a factor that makes the issue a lower priority for U.S. law enforcement. “If I make a vague law … I give corrupt authorities the ability to interpret it in a way to extort people,” said Juan José Cirión Lee, a lawyer and president of the collective Mexico and the World Vaping, who said he plans to challenge the regulations in court as ambiguous and contradictory.
The ban’s path to implementation has been shaped by Mexico’s top court and successive administrations. Former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador banned the import and sale of e-cigarettes, and when Mexico’s Supreme Court declared that ban unconstitutional, López Obrador pushed for a constitutional amendment. Under Sheinbaum, the amendment passed in January 2025, and electronic cigarettes were added alongside fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that Mexico’s government has treated as a major drug threat. However, lawyers said that the lack of implementing law created a loophole for a time, allowing vapes to keep entering Mexico from China—the main producer—and the United States, with the devices still appearing for sale in shops and online in December.
Even before the nationwide ban fully tightened, authorities seized large quantities of electronic cigarettes. Last February, Mexican authorities seized 130,000 electronic cigarettes in the port of Lázaro Cárdenas, a sign that enforcement activity was continuing even as legal sales persisted under certain conditions. Another shop owner, Aldo Martínez, was fined $38,000 for selling the devices; he fought the ruling and eventually did not have to pay. But under the new rules, a law now prohibits virtually everything about vapes except consumption, according to the AP report, and it includes fines and prison sentences of up to eight years, prompting Martínez to stop selling even though the devices accounted for about two-thirds of his income.
Martínez’s situation illustrates the new legal pressure faced by retailers. He and others who relied on selling vapes said they now worry about raids and even extortion tactics, including allegations that authorities could plant vapes to justify prosecution. Consumers, too, said they are unsure how many devices are allowed for personal use, as the law’s limits were described as unclear, raising the prospect that enforcement discretion could be used against buyers.
Organized crime’s interest in vaping appears to have been building alongside drug trafficking for years, according to Rosario and others interviewed in the AP story. They said intimidation, extortion and violence pushed some sellers out in northern states such as Sonora, while some former clients in Sinaloa chose to sell vapes supplied by cartels, which they said promised protection from authorities. Rosario said he had lost about 40% of his clients as a result of this pressure.
The AP report also described how cartels have varied their approach to branding and supply. Some sellers said cartels marked products with stickers or stamps, a practice reminiscent of how cartel-pushed fentanyl pills have been stamped. Others said criminal groups have sought to appear as suppliers and formal businesses, including buying disposable vape components from Asian manufacturers and repackaging them. A report by the Mexican nongovernmental organization Defensorxs, as cited in the story, said the Jalisco New Generation Cartel has businesses dedicated to repackaging Asian vapes, while other criminal groups—including the Sinaloa cartel—operate in the vape black market.
When Mexico’s ban moved from constitutional change toward enforcement, authorities publicly displayed seized vapes the day after it took effect. The next day, the AP reported that authorities confiscated more than 50,000 vapes and displayed them in Mexico City’s central square, where Mayor Clara Brugada framed enforcement as necessary to protect young people. Some legal advocates and consumers argued the policy could instead increase youth access by pushing sales into illegal channels. For Cirión Lee, the logic was that banned products can attract younger buyers while criminals and drug traffickers—who he said already sell other controlled substances—may now be able to supply vaping.
The report also pointed to mixed international experiences. Brazil banned vapes in 2009, but they remain widely used among young people there, while in the United States—where vaping is not banned—vaping among adolescents fell in 2024 to the lowest level in a decade as regulation increased, according to the AP story. The AP report also said U.S. Food and Drug Administration and most scientists agree that, based on available evidence, electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional cigarettes, while Snapp argued Mexico’s ban removes what she described as a safer alternative to cigarettes.
As enforcement tightens, some consumers and small sellers appear to be adapting their tactics in response to uncertainty. One person who said he lost his business to a cartel in 2022 described “panic buys” for months of supply as people searched for ways to avoid the ban’s implications. Another young entrepreneur near Mexico’s northern border said he can keep operating under the radar because he has neither stores nor a website, handling sales through phone calls and messages and seeking anonymity for safety. He said cartels have left him alone so far because he does not sell disposable vapes, but he expects the market will eventually fall entirely into organized crime’s hands.