Most E-Cigarettes Sold in the U.S. Are Illegal. The Federal Response Has Been Modest.
Of the more than 6,000 e-cigarette products estimated to be available for sale in the United States as of June 2024, only 39 had received authorization from the Food and Drug Administration as of December 2025. Every other product on the market is, by definition, illegal—subject to seizure and enforcement action under federal law. The gap between the size of the unauthorized market and the scale of the federal response is the subject of a March 2026 GAO report (GAO-26-107991) examining the Department of Justice’s enforcement record on unauthorized e-cigarettes.
The numbers tell the story plainly. DOJ has taken 88 total civil and criminal enforcement actions related to e-cigarettes between fiscal year 2022—when it generally began this type of enforcement—and fiscal year 2025. That covers four years of activity across a market with thousands of illegal products in circulation. The actions included 20 statutory injunction proceedings, 13 civil forfeiture actions, 4 civil penalty actions, 1 criminal prosecution, and 50 placements on ATF’s list of unregistered or noncompliant delivery sellers.
The report does not characterize this volume as inadequate—GAO is careful to note that DOJ officials themselves said the case count was too small to warrant a formal resource assessment—but the context is impossible to ignore. The FDA has authorized 39 products. More than 6,000 are on the market. Eighty-eight enforcement actions over four years is not a posture designed to clear that gap.
The picture became more complicated in February 2025, when the Attorney General issued a memorandum directing ATF to shift resources away from its alcohol and tobacco enforcement programs toward immigration, human trafficking, and cartel priorities. E-cigarette enforcement was not listed among DOJ’s investigative priorities. ATF officials responded by stating the agency would administer its statutory responsibilities consistent with the administration’s current priorities—language that acknowledges the statutory mandate while signaling discretionary de-prioritization.
Simultaneously, the Department of Health and Human Services initiated a department-wide reorganization in March 2025 that included FDA, creating uncertainty about the future capacity of the attorneys who refer e-cigarette matters from FDA to DOJ. A court issued a preliminary injunction in July 2025 blocking reductions in force at FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, and as of December 2025 FDA officials stated they were continuing to send referrals to DOJ for review. Whether that pipeline survives ongoing litigation and reorganization remains an open question.
The interagency e-cigarette task force, established by DOJ and FDA in June 2024, represents the most coordinated federal effort in this space. Its joint actions have produced significant seizures: 3 million products worth an estimated $76 million in October 2024, 2 million units worth $33.8 million in Chicago in February 2025, and more than 2 million illicit vaping products across seven states in September 2025. But the task force’s future posture under current administration priorities is, like ATF’s tobacco enforcement capacity generally, subject to discretion rather than mandate.
The full report is available at gao.gov under report number GAO-26-107991.