A vape ban in Mexico has triggered dangerous consequences.
While it's alarming to see children puffing away on vapes, unbothered by the health risks they cause, it turns out that outright banning e-cigarettes may not be the solution. In a report by the Latin American Post, Mexico's law forbidding vapes doesn't seem to be working.
In December 2024, the ban on vapes and e-cigarettes came into place, but without the proper guidelines or penalties in place, the law has "done more harm than good," according to the Post.
Vapes are still widely available, only now they are sold without regulations by individuals willing to break the law. Making it impossible to legally purchase vapes has opened the door to a black market filled with extortion and organized crime.
With differing consequences for vaping across states in Mexico, the research director at Instituto RIA, Julia Anguiano, remarked, per the Post: "Imagine getting stopped with a vape in Aguascalientes. You could be arrested."
"Drive 45 minutes to Zacatecas, and it's just a ticket. That's not enforcement — it's a lottery."
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The law may even have made vaping more dangerous because of the lack of regulations in testing ingredients or health impacts. The report suggests that the methods of lowering vape sales in the United States are much more impactful. California's ban on flavored vapes saw the monthly sales of e-cigarettes drop by 58.8%, according to Tobacco Monitoring.
Often touted as a less harmful alternative to smoking, vaping still comes with its own health risks, many of which haven't been tested over a long period of time. These can include lung damage, nicotine addiction, and damage done by inhaling the heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals included in vapes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So it's important that governments legislate and regulate these harmful e-cigarettes properly to deter young people from smoking them, instead of marketing them in fun flavors and bright colors to appeal to children.
Not only would reducing these smoking devices be beneficial for health reasons, but a reduction of the single-use plastic waste created by vapes would be massively positive for the planet. The cartons are an eyesore when discarded in public areas, and they are a choking hazard for pets and wildlife, can cause toxic electronic waste, and pose a fire risk because of the improper disposal of lithium batteries.
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"If the goal is health," Anguiano said, "regulation is inevitable. The only question is how many people will be extorted, criminalized, or sickened before we get there."
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