United States Vaping Index 2024

Introduction

Despite initially embracing vaping technology, numerous U.S. state governments are increasingly imposing stringent restrictions on flavored nicotine vaping devices. Only a handful of states—Alaska, North Dakota, and Tennessee—maintain fully permissive policies that avoid conflating vapes with traditional tobacco products, refrain from banning flavors, and allow online sales without excessive taxation or regulation. In contrast, twelve states, including Utah, California, and New York, have adopted aggressive measures against vaping, driven largely by misconceptions that equate vaping with smoking and fears of a moral panic surrounding youth usage. These policies persist despite robust scientific evidence demonstrating that vaping is significantly safer than combustible tobacco and serves as an effective tool for smoking cessation. As misinformation continues to shape public perception and legislative actions, it becomes increasingly vital to present an accurate, evidence-based understanding of flavored vaping devices and their role in public health.

About the research

We ranked all fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, to inform consumers on vaping policies in their locality and highlight the urgent need for more informed and level-headed decision-making. We used five factors: whether the state considers vapes to be tobacco products, state-level vaping flavor restrictions, state registries (which mirror the FDA-approved database), additional excise taxes on vaping, and the presence/absence of online sales bans.

Our second annual edition builds on our existing analysis using information from the Public Health Law Center at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, statements by state authorities, real-time legal updates, tax authority records, and press articles on the topic. Readers will discover two new categories, tobacco product classification and state registries, among the assessment criteria. With new scores comes an expansion in score ranges and corresponding final marks, now A+, A, B, C, D, and F. Lastly, we expanded on the methodology section to explain how we operationalized each criterion in more detail and why we chose the variables we did.

US Vaping Index 2024

Results

The 2024 results show a sharp decline in state vaping policy scores compared to 2020 (see Vaping Index 2020), when the median and most common grade was an A. Now, the median is a C, with 16 states receiving this grade, and the number of lowest-ranking states has doubled from 6 to 12. Utah, which scored zero points, now ranks as the most anti-vaping state, implementing strict regulations like banning non-FDA-approved flavors and online sales, citing a “youth vaping epidemic” as justification.

However, the data shows a nationwide decline in teen vaping, even in states without such harsh measures, undermining the idea of an epidemic. Utah’s restrictive policies risk driving consumers to lower-quality products, black markets, or back to smoking, which is far more harmful. If states adopted evidence-based harm-reduction approaches, vaping could play a significant role in saving 6.6 million lives from smoking-related deaths across the U.S.

Benefits for Consumers

Conversely, the thirteen entries that received an A or A+ in this assessment are best positioned to harness vaping’s potential against cigarette smoking. The upsides to living in any of the highest-ranked states are clearer policy-level perspectives on the differences between vaping and smoking (and the ability to educate consumers on the topic), higher taxes on cigarettes than vapes (incentivizing the far less harmful option), allowing consumers to better tailor their vaping experience to their needs via online sales, promoting local independent businesses (which are likelier to suffer from onerous operating and maintenance costs derived from stringent regulations), and look for ways to protect young people while preserving consumer choice for adults.

The A+ options (Alaska, North Dakota, Tennessee) show the most potential; however, whether they will adopt a harm-reduction approach in the future or not remains to be seen.
The number of state flavor bans has sharply increased, from 12 cases in 2020 to 20 in 2024
There is a dramatic rise in partial and complete online sales bans, from just 4 states in 2020 to 18 cases today
PMTA registries dominate the list, with 32 states having passed or attempted to pass one

Research note: We strive to improve the quality of this index’s underlying data every year and aim to refine its methodology further. We sometimes face contradictory information, indicators measured differently by different states, and constant shifts in legislation (where a stalled bill may be adopted or a law is suddenly abandoned). We ask the index readers to acknowledge the difficulties in working with heterogeneous data and caution users to be aware of the underlying complications.

Furthermore, what makes a state “good” for each individual can have a distinct qualitative element. Please remember, then, that our assessments are strictly quantitative and non-normative. We are not passing moral judgment on a state’s goodness and badness or downplaying personal experiences by ranking one state lower than another. We are simply highlighting takeaways based on the data available at the time of this index.

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