India’s vaping ban was designed to eliminate a public health threat. However, seven years after implementation, it has largely dismantled the legal market instead. Vaping products persist through informal distribution channels, recently highlighted when footage emerged of an IPL cricket player allegedly using an e-cigarette. This situation raises a critical policy question: prohibiting a product does not necessarily eliminate its existence.
The Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act (PECA) relied on straightforward logic—restrict access to vaping products and demand will decline. The legislation addressed genuine concerns about youth vaping, nicotine addiction, and public health risks. Yet whether prohibition represents the most effective solution remains unclear. Evidence suggests a more nuanced reality: vaping products remain accessible through underground channels, internet networks, and grey-market distributors. The market has not vanished; it has simply moved underground.
This distinction carries important implications because prohibition relocates activity rather than eliminating it. When products move underground, regulators lose market visibility. Age restrictions become harder to enforce. Product quality standards become unverifiable. Consumers lack assurance about product authenticity or origins. While regulated markets cannot eliminate all risk, they provide mechanisms to manage it. Black markets offer no such protections.
India’s approach increasingly raises uncomfortable questions about policy effectiveness. Current policy assumes prohibition represents the optimal harm-reduction strategy. Historical evidence suggests otherwise: eliminating legal supply does not automatically destroy demand.
