The tobacco product landscape has dramatically changed in the past two decades due to electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), particularly electronic cigarettes (e‑cigarettes). Since their introduction to the US market in 2007, e‑cigarettes have surged in popularity, particularly among young people. In 2014, they surpassed conventional cigarettes as the most widely used tobacco product among consumers under the age of 18. From 2017 to 2018, past-month e‑cigarette use nearly doubled among high school students, from 11.7 to 20.8 percent, and increased among middle school students from 3.3 to 4.9 percent over the same period. This rapid increase prompted the US surgeon general to declare youth vaping a national epidemic.

E‑cigarettes have been marketed as a less harmful alternative to combustible cigarettes because their aerosols contain far fewer chemicals than cigarette smoke. The UK Office for Health Improvement and Disparities estimates that vaping poses approximately 5 percent of the health risk of smoking, though many experts remain uncertain about this figure. Nevertheless, this perception of lower risk makes e‑cigarettes a popular smoking cessation method.

Despite claims of safety, e‑cigarettes still contain harmful additives and expose users to prolonged heat. Additionally, e‑cigarettes tend to attract younger consumers, largely due to targeted advertisements featuring elements appealing to young people, such as flavors, fruit imagery, health references, and other positive sensations. A perceived elevation in social status associated with their use further strengthens their appeal.

This tension poses a regulatory challenge: How can policymakers enable access to e‑cigarettes as a harm reduction tool for adult smokers while minimizing uptake among young people? A major focus of tobacco control efforts has been regulating the channels through which young people obtain nicotine products. When e‑cigarettes were introduced, they were heavily marketed and sold online, with an estimated 30–50 percent of sales occurring through the internet. Accordingly, states and the federal government have adopted online sales restrictions of varying strictness.

Over the past 15 years, eight states have prohibited online sales and shipments of e‑cigarettes, and two states have required age verification for online sales. In 2009, Congress banned online sales of flavored cigarettes in the United States, but this prohibition did not extend to e‑cigarettes. It was not until 2021 that federal policy restricted online e‑cigarette sales by prohibiting the US Postal Service from shipping ENDS products. Major private shipping carriers (including DHL, FedEx, and UPS) have also voluntarily adopted this policy. Many online vendors have since switched to local and regional carriers to continue online sales.

Our study is the first to comprehensively examine how statewide online sales bans have affected e‑cigarette use and smoking behavior among young people and adults. We used data from five national surveys conducted between 2013 and 2023 and leveraged the staggered adoption of the bans across states. Our findings reveal no evidence that prohibiting online sales reduced youth e‑cigarette use. Specifically, we can rule out reductions larger than 3.6 percent in the share of young people who used any ENDS product during the month before the survey (relative to the average vaping rate before the bans). Furthermore, these bans had a minimal effect on the frequency of use among continuing users.

Our research produces several findings that help explain the ineffectiveness of online sales bans. Notably, we found that young people rarely used the internet to obtain ENDS products before the bans. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about 3 percent of youth users relied on the internet to obtain ENDS products between 2017 and 2023. Thus, although the bans reduced online purchases by 40–50 percent on average, the overall reduction in youth use was less than 1 percentage point. Moreover, the fact that online purchases were not eliminated suggests that some young people continued to obtain ENDS products online through illegal shipments. The evidence also suggests that young people shifted from online to in-person purchases and obtained more ENDS products from family and friends.

Finally, some have argued that online sales restrictions would make it difficult for adults to purchase ENDS products, undercutting efforts to transition smokers away from more harmful combustible cigarettes. However, our findings show no evidence that online sales bans reduced e‑cigarette or cigarette use among adults, even though adults use these products at higher rates than young people.

Note
This research brief is based on Ege Aksu et al., “The Effect of Online Sales Bans on E‑Cigarette Use,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 34565, December 2025.