In late March, a tobacco shop in Dyersburg, Tennessee, announced the arrival of a new product in its store: a disposable nicotine vaporizer with an LCD screen that can connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Marketed under the RAMA brand, the strawberry and kiwi flavored vaporizer It looks more like a mobile phone from the early 2000s than a typical e-cigarette. It allows users to customize the screen background, see how many puffs of nicotine remain, and even track the device’s location using an accompanying app. “NEVER LOSE YOUR VAPE AGAIN!!!!” Mk Smoke Shop said in a Facebook post.
Far from being a unique novelty, the RAMA model is part of a wave of technologically sophisticated and highly powerful disposable vaporizers that have begun to appear on the shelves of tobacconists and convenience stores throughout the United States in recent months, according to data from the industry, social networks. media publications and other records viewed by WIRED.
Made almost exclusively in China, the vaporizers are colorful and come in eye-catching metallic finishes, soft silicone textures, and rounded shapes that fit comfortably in a person’s hand. But what really sets them apart are the LCD screens, which make these devices even more harmful to the environment than regular disposable vaporizers. And like the vast majority of e-cigarettes available in stores, they are technically illegal and have not been approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration.
These so-called smart vaporizers are the product of an innovation boom taking place in China. $28 billion Electronic cigarette export industry. It was spurred, in part, by lax enforcement of nicotine regulations in the United States. The United States accounts for nearly two-thirds of Chinese vaporizer exports, according to the China Electronics Chamber of Commerce. From 2020 to 2023, the CDC Foundation estimates that sales of non-tobacco flavored vaporizers in the U.S. arose more than 60 percent, increasing from 11.2 million to 18 million units.
As competition for the US market intensified, Shenzhen vaporizer producers needed to find ways to make their products stand out. That’s why they developed vaporizers that were more affordable, better designed, and delivered higher doses of nicotine compared to their predecessors. In many cases, these innovations allowed them to move up the e-cigarette value chain.
Robert Jackler, professor emeritus of head and neck surgery at Stanford University and founder of an interdisciplinary group Investigation Group Studying the impacts of tobacco advertising, he said American companies have long been manufacturing vaporizers in Shenzhen. But after the Chinese government banned the sale of flavored vaporizers in 2022, Chinese suppliers began selling them. focusing more in marketing its own products directly to foreign customers.
“They eliminated the Americans,” Jackler says. As of last year, the Associated Press reported that there were more than 9,000 types of vaping products available for sale in the United States, a number almost triple increase since 2020.
The proliferation of flavored disposable vapes from China has alarmed lawmakers in both the United States and Europe. Regulators say they are especially concerned about the impact the devices are having on children, who may find the sweet flavors and eye-catching designs they feature particularly appealing.