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The Effect of Online Sales Bans on E-Cigarette Use
- Since their introduction to the US market in 2007, e-cigarettes have surged in popularity, particularly among young people, surpassing conventional cigarettes in 2014 as the most widely used tobacco product among consumers under the age of 18. 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, making them a popular smoking cessation method for adults, but they also tend to attract younger consumers through targeted advertisements. 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?
- 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. It was not until 2021 that federal policy restricted online e-cigarette sales by prohibiting the US Postal Service from shipping ENDS products.
- 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, using data from five national surveys conducted between 2013 and 2023 and leveraging the staggered adoption of the bans across states. Our findings reveal no evidence that prohibiting online sales reduced youth e-cigarette use; 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.
- We found that young people rarely used the internet to obtain ENDS products before the bans - 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, as young people shifted from online to in-person purchases and obtained more ENDS products from family and friends. Our findings also 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.
- 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. It was not until 2021 that federal policy restricted online e-cigarette sales by prohibiting the US Postal Service from shipping ENDS products.
- 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, using data from five national surveys conducted between 2013 and 2023 and leveraging the staggered adoption of the bans across states. Our findings reveal no evidence that prohibiting online sales reduced youth e-cigarette use; 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.
- We found that young people rarely used the internet to obtain ENDS products before the bans - 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, as young people shifted from online to in-person purchases and obtained more ENDS products from family and friends. Our findings also 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.
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