The vaping industry has surged over the last decade, as health bodies have promoted it as an aid to quit smoking while cigarettes continue to fall out of fashion.
But the vaping industry is facing a reckoning. Governments are looking to restrict the sale of disposable vapes amid concerns about the rise in vaping among young people and non-smokers getting addicted.
Marcus Saxton, CEO of British vape company Totally Wicked and chairman of the Independent British Vape Trade Association, said: “The [vaping] market is worth between $3 billion and $4 billion. You could estimate, and intelligence would suggest, that the illicit market could be as much as two-thirds of that.”
As revenue from cigarettes declines, big tobacco companies hope to capitalize on the fast-growing vape market, Owen Bennett, global tobacco and cannabis equity researcher at Jefferies, told CNBC.
“The old cigarette model in terms of volume declines was becoming much more pressured,” he noted.
As of October, 28 countries have banned the sale of e-cigarettes. The U.K., Germany, France, Ireland and Belgium are among the countries looking into how they can ban disposable, or one-use vapes, as they continue to grow in popularity.
However, regulating that could be an uphill struggle.
Jasmine Khouja, a senior research associate from the University of Bristol’s Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, said: “What we’ve seen in America is that [vaping] has kind of plateaued, and I think it’s starting to reduce a little bit as well. So I think we probably won’t see much more of an increase.
“I think we’ve got to around the level at which it will be at its most popular, but how long it takes for it to decrease in popularity, again, is yet to be seen.”
So, what does the rise in vaping mean for the tobacco industry, and is the hysteria over its impacts well-justified? Watch the video to find out.
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