E-Cigarette Sales Rose 46.6% in 2020–2022 as Flavored Disposables Took Over

In January 2020, the Food and Drug Administration said it would prioritize enforcement against prefilled e-cigarette cartridges in flavors other than tobacco and menthol, because of how many young people used them. What followed, store sales data show, was not fewer flavored e-cigarettes but a different kind: sales of mint and other flavored cartridges stopped, and sales of fruit-, sweet- and mint-flavored disposable e-cigarettes rose.

Sales, 2020–2022

The CDC Foundation, Truth Initiative and CDC analyzed retail scanner data from brick-and-mortar stores for January 26, 2020, to December 25, 2022 (online sales and vape shops were not included).

Sales rose until May 2022 and then declined, likely because of state and local flavor restrictions, FDA actions, possible pandemic supply problems, inflation, and new large disposables that deliver thousands of puffs — so fewer units may not mean less use.

Total e-cigarette unit sales by flavor, January 2020–December 2022. Credit: CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Flavors

Menthol's share barely moved (32.3 percent to 31.9 percent). The rest shifted:

Prefilled cartridge sales by flavor. Credit: CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Disposable e-cigarette sales by flavor. Credit: CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Top brands

Vuse, JUUL, NJOY and My Blu sell prefilled cartridges; Puff, Elf Bar and Breeze Smoke are disposables. Elf Bar, which has driven sharp increases in e-cigarette use among 16- to 19-year-olds in England, was by August 2022 the top disposable brand among a U.S. sample of 4,142 young people that age, and in December 2022 the top-selling disposable. Flavored disposables are now the device most used by U.S. middle and high school students who vape.

Why it matters

E-cigarette use is far higher among young people than among adults overall: in 2021, 4.5 percent of adults and 11.0 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds used them, and in 2022, 14.1 percent of high school students (about 2.14 million). E-cigarettes often contain high levels of nicotine, which is highly addictive and can harm the adolescent brain, which keeps developing until about age 25.

• Flavor laws. By the end of 2022, seven states (California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Utah) and 378 localities restricted flavored e-cigarette sales in some way, though some exempt menthol or products such as cigars. Massachusetts, with well-enforced comprehensive restrictions, has seen large, lasting declines in sales, and a review of nine studies found youth tobacco use fell after flavor restrictions.
• FDA action. The FDA denied marketing for about 55,000 flavored e-cigarette products on August 26, 2021, and for a menthol cartridge product on October 26, 2022; only tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes have been authorized. It has also sent warning letters over illegal flavored disposables such as Puff Bar, the brand most used by middle and high school students in 2022.

The authors call for comprehensive restrictions on all flavored tobacco products — e-cigarettes, menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars — alongside higher prices, smoke-free policies that cover e-cigarettes, and counter-marketing campaigns.

Limits

Online sales (estimated at 20 percent of the total) and vape shops were not covered; nicotine strength and device size were not accounted for; and buyers' ages are unknown.

Sources

Based on "E-cigarette Unit Sales by Product and Flavor Type, and Top-Selling Brands, United States, 2020–2022," by Fatma Romeh M. Ali and colleagues (CDC Foundation; Truth Initiative; CDC), Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.