The US vejp market is being fundamentally remodelled. Since 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been responsible for approving all new vejp products - but almost a decade later, only a few have been given the green light. While waiting for a decision, several states have started to introduce their own registries and product lists. The result is a growing patchwork of stricter rules.
The FDA gained formal oversight of vejp products through the so-called “Deeming Rule” back in 2016. Since then, all new products must go through the agency's Premarket Tobacco Product Application (PMTA) process to be legally sold.
But that process has become long and legally complicated. After several court decisions, a deadline was set in 2020 for manufacturers to submit their applications, and millions poured in. But what has happened since then is that the FDA has progressively rejected the vast majority - with a very limited number receiving marketing authorisation. According to the FDA's own list of authorised products, this is a vanishingly small number compared to the broad market the country had before 2020.
In the meantime, many products have remained in a kind of regulatory limbo - neither formally authorised nor clearly removed from the market.
The states take the ball themselves
It is this vacuum that several states now seem to have tired of and are trying to ”fill” themselves.
In West Virginia, for example, House Bill 5437, known as the “Vape Safety Act”, has advanced through 2026, requiring all retailers to be specially licensed and only allowing products on a state list to be sold. To be on the list, the manufacturer must be able to show that the product has either received FDA approval or is covered by a submitted PMTA application.
Similar so-called ”e-cigarette registry laws” have been introduced or are under consideration in more than a dozen other states, according to data compiled by the Public Health Law Centre.
In practice, this means that the states themselves decide which products can be sold within their borders - although the federal process is not yet finalised.
A patchwork emerges
The consequence is that the US has less and less of a uniform regulatory framework for vejp. A product authorised in one state may not be listed in another. For manufacturers, this means they have to navigate a jungle of different rules with different application processes and different penalty systems. For retailers, it makes navigation difficult to say the least, and for consumers, it means a reduced and uneven supply. Unfortunately, it seems that the patchwork of rules makes them even stricter than before. This is also because the FDA is not working very fast. As the agency has only approved a limited number of products, the registry laws often lead to the disappearance of large parts of the previous range from those states.
Legal tug-of-war
These developments have already led to legal challenges. In Iowa, a federal court preliminarily blocked the state's registry law on the grounds that it may conflict with federal law and the FDA's mandate. The case has now gone to an appeals court and could set a precedent for how far states can go before their rules are seen as encroaching on federal jurisdiction. In simpler terms: how much can a state add on top of an already existing federal regulation?
Looking at the big picture, regulation is getting tougher in many places. More licences are required, more products are excluded from legal sale, and penalties are tightened. At the same time, the system is becoming less uniform. Instead of a slow but national process via the FDA, geographical differences are growing.
