Mexico is set to ban vapes by the end of the year, the country’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has announced.
The decision has prompted fears that it would fuel an already thriving black market, led by powerful and violent organised crime gangs.
Sheinbaum said her government wants to enshrine the ban into Mexico’s constitution before January 2025. Currently, vapes are in a legal grey area after a previous ban on their import and sale - introduced in May 2020 - was successfully challenged in court.
The ban was ruled to be unconstitutional by the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court last year as it ‘contravened freedom of commerce’.
The governing party Morena then won a landslide victory at the last elections in June, giving it a supermajority in congress. This means it can rewrite the constitution without effective opposition.
Cartels control 90 per cent of vape market
Roughly 1.7 million Mexicans use vapes, and the number is rising, with no sign that the last attempt to ban them reduced demand.
Currently there are two markets for vapes; a legal one, where more expensive vapes are imported for sale in convenience stores, for example, and an illegal one where cheaper vapes are sold more informally, usually by street vendors.
Óscar Balderas, a journalist who has investigated the issue, estimates that the latter market accounts for as much as 90 per cent of all vapes sold in Mexico - and it is controlled by organised crime.
“These vapes are brought by organised crime from China, India and even Bangladesh,” Mr Balderas told the Guardian. “They might bring them by boat to Central America, entering through the southern border and paying bribes to get to Mexico City, then they are distributed across the country.”
Mr Balderas estimates that this black market is worth five billion pesos a year, or roughly €231 billion. “And organised crime is getting all of that. It’s a sack of cash for them,” he said.
Crime groups - such as the feared Sinaloa cartel and Jalisco New Generation cartel - assert their control over the vape trade by punishing those who sell vapes without their permission. Illegal vapes are also entirely unregulated and can therefore contain dangerous chemicals.
“The consumer has no idea what they’re putting in their body,” Mr Balderas said. “Some of the cheapest vapes sold in the street have been found to contain mercury.”
More expense for the public health system
The outcome of a lack of regulation is more expense for the public health system. It has to pay for any associated illnesses from unregulated vapes as criminal groups pay no tax on their income.
If the vape ban is made concrete by being included in the constitution, there are concerns that these already serious issues would be made much worse.
As has been proven in other countries such as Australia, vape laws don’t make the legal market - which continues to grow - disappear. It just gets passed into the hands of organised crime, making their power and the potential for violence balloon.
“Organised crime is using this money for bribes, for weapons, for bullets – to finance wars like the one we are seeing in Sinaloa right now,” Mr Balderas said.
‘Banning something doesn’t make it safe’
Academic Angélica Ospina, who researches drug use and harm reduction, said that although the ban aims to reduce the number of young people vaping, it will have worrying unintended consequences.
“Theoretically, the vape market is directed at adults who smoke,” she said. “But there is also strategic marketing directed towards young people: the colours, the designs, the flavours.
“However, the move to ban vapes will not address these concerns. Banning something doesn’t make it safe. It only means we don’t see it. It removes it from sight. And that’s a problem - because it throws it in a dark place.”
Vape advocates and harm reduction experts argue that a more effective alternative to banning vapes would be to regulate them in a similar way to tobacco and alcohol. These are monitored by health agencies, taxed, and illegal to buy for under 18s.
“We’re adults,” Mr Balderas said. “Maybe we want to drink a few mezcales [a distilled alcoholic drink]. We know it’s not as healthy as water - but at least we know it’s been checked and the ingredients are of high quality.”
Regulation would mean increased tax revenue
Mr Balderas says the taxes raised from this method could go straight to the health system. It would also mean that legal companies, that pay their taxes, could enter the low-cost vape market that is currently dominated by organised crime.
“But once organised crime takes a market, it’s very difficult to get it back,” he said.
Ms Ospina said: “We tend to think in terms of markets black and white: the legal and the illegal. But really it’s often a grey market, but there are darker and lighter greys. And the issue is how we reduce harm.”
In March, a crowd of vapers protested in front of Mexico’s Congress of the Union, calling for the country’s existing vaping ban to be replaced with risk-based regulation.
Deputy Sergio Barrera said at the time: “It is very unfortunate that the federal government thought that the ban would prevent many young people from having access to vaping and does not give people who want to quit smoking the opportunity to use this option.
“We need to have clear rules. We need to know who can produce it, who can distribute it and who can consume it, and that is why we are pushing for regulation.”
Smoking causes more than 40,000 deaths a year in Mexico, which has a relatively high smoking rate of 11.6 per cent (15 million people).
