The author is a retired assistant director of ATF and an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University.
By Rich Marianos
American police leaders spend every waking hour wrestling with evolving threats. The newest menace is so ordinary‑looking that it slips under many radars: An ocean of illegal, candy‑flavored vape devices pouring into corner stores and TikTok streams alike.
The numbers are grim. While youth cigarette smoking has collapsed to a historic low, underage use of unregulated e‑cigarettes is spiking, powered by brands such as Geek Bar and Lost Mary that have never passed an FDA lab test. These gadgets are manufactured overseas with no quality controls, shipped through porous ports, and sold with zero regard for American law or children’s lungs.
While many see this as a public-health story, this is a public safety and national security story. Illicit tobacco is now a cash crop for Mexican cartels, Chinese factories, and the same transnational crime rings that bankroll fentanyl pipelines and gun running.
Every pallet of black‑market vapes converts into liquid capital for violence, tax evasion, and corruption on both sides of the border. Leaving this trade unchecked hands easy money to people who already regard our laws as speed bumps.
Washington’s response under the Biden administration was a study in incompetence and paralysis. Out of tens of millions of product applications, the FDA has authorized a microscopic handful. Meanwhile, roughly nine out of ten devices on shelves are illegal imports. Customs teams seize a few truckloads, declare victory, and watch the river keep flowing.
In the firearms arena, at least we have the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Yet even the ATF is expected to police a multi‑billion‑dollar illicit tobacco market with the staffing levels of a medium‑sized sheriff’s office. If chiefs of police want meaningful change, they must lead the charge.
Calls to Action: Strengthen the Enforcement Network
- Strengthen the ATF. To combat the cartels, we need to cut off their funding fueled by low risk commodities like tobacco that are smuggled alongside fentanyl precursors. Demand that Congress boost ATF staffing, investigative authority, and technology so it can strike at gun traffickers and the criminal tobacco pipeline that finances cartels, extremist groups, and organized crime. Firearms will always be priority one, but ignoring tobacco cashflows leaves the enemy’s treasury intact.
- Forge Local–Federal Task Forces. Build regional enforcement hubs where U.S. Attorneys, ATF agents, and municipal detectives pool intelligence and raid warehouses together.
- Insist on a Real‑Time Product List. Push FDA and Customs to publish a constantly updated roster of nicotine devices that have been denied authorization so street officers and honest retailers can spot contraband instantly.
- Run Community‑Level Inspections. Set measurable state goals—say, pushing illicit vape prevalence below five percent—and back them with systematic sweep operations that escalate from education to citations to padlocks.
- Choke the Supply Chain. Urge state prosecutors to deploy civil injunctions and criminal indictments against the importers, brokers, and wholesalers who drive this shadow economy.
- Partner With Schools and Parents. Treat vaping as the school‑campus epidemic it is. Leverage school resource officers, coaches and athletic administrators, and brief parent groups so prevention and enforcement march in step.
The Road Ahead
Illicit vapes are not harmless party favors. They are contraband commodities that attract guns, narcotics, and cash wherever they spread. When prohibition outruns enforcement, black markets bloom, as Massachusetts discovered after its flavor ban. Chiefs of police cannot wait for federal perfection.
By rallying around an empowered, fully funded ATF and adopting pragmatic local tactics, law enforcement can slice into this revenue stream and deny violent actors their easiest payday. The threat is real, the clock is running, and inaction is not a neutral choice.
