Shrey Madaan, Indian Policy Associate, Consumer Choice Center
India’s vaping ban was intended to eliminate a public health risk. Seven years later, it has largely eliminated the legal market instead. Vaping products continue to be available through informal channels, most recently drawing attention after footage of an IPL cricket player allegedly using an e-cigarette went viral. The episode highlights a question policymakers have yet to answer : banning a product is not the same as eliminating it.
The Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act PECA was enacted on a clear logic, restricting access to vaping products and demand will fall. The law reflected concerns about youth vaping, nicotine use, and public health. Those concerns were real. What isn’t clear is whether prohibition has been the most effective way to address them. Years after the ban was introduced, the evidence points to a more complicated picture. Vaping products remain available through informal channels, online networks, and grey-market suppliers. The market has not disappeared. It has simply moved underground.
That distinction matters because prohibition changes where activity occurs, not necessarily whether it occurs at all. When products are pushed underground, regulators lose visibility into the market. Age restrictions become harder to enforce. Product standards become impossible to verify. Consumers have little assurance about what they are purchasing or where it came from. A regulated market may not eliminate risk, but it provides tools to manage it. A black market offers no safeguards.
This is where India’s approach increasingly raises difficult questions. The current framework assumes that prohibition is the most effective way to reduce harm. Yet history suggests that restricting legal supply does not automatically eliminate demand.
Bhutan offers a good example. In 2010, it introduced one of the world’s strictest tobacco prohibitions. The policy was intended to curb consumption, but it also fuelled illicit trade and cross-border smuggling. Eventually, authorities were forced to acknowledge the limitations of prohibition and relax aspects of the policy. The lesson was not that tobacco is harmless. It was that demand often survives long after legal markets disappear.
The same principle applies to vaping. Demand does not disappear simply because the product is banned. Consumers continue to seek alternatives, often through unregulated imports and informal markets. The result is a system with less oversight, fewer consumer protections, and greater uncertainty about product quality.
Other countries opted for a different approach. Sweden chose reducing harm rather than eliminating alternatives. By allowing adult smokers access to lower-risk products such as snus, nicotine pouches, and vaping products, it has achieved some of the lowest smoking rates in Europe and significantly reduced smoking-related harm.
The United Kingdom has taken a similar path. Policymakers have focused on managing risks through regulation rather than attempting to eliminate alternatives altogether. The result is a framework that combines consumer protections with harm-reduction opportunities for adult smokers.
India’s nicotine policy continues to focus on restricting products rather than reducing harm. Cigarettes remain readily available, while alternatives are excluded from the market. A framework built around relative risk would be better positioned to improve public health outcomes and expand consumer choice.
The real question is not whether vaping is risk-free, but whether prohibition is a better public health strategy than harm reduction. History suggests otherwise. When legal alternatives are removed, demand does not disappear, it shifts. The result is often a growing informal market where consumers face greater uncertainty and fewer protections than in a regulated system.
The broader question, therefore, is not whether vaping carries health risks. It does. The question is whether a ban that has failed to eliminate demand is delivering better results than a framework built around age verification, product standards, quality controls, and harm reduction.
Seven years after PECA came into force, India’s vaping debate remains stuck on whether the product should exist. A more useful conversation would focus on whether the current policy is achieving its intended goals. If vaping continues despite prohibition, it may be time to evaluate whether eliminating regulation has done more than eliminate vaping itself.
