At the end of March, a smoke shop in Dyersburg, Tennessee, announced the arrival of a modern product in its store: a disposable nicotine vaporizer with an LCD display that can be connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Sold under the RAMA brand, the Strawberry and kiwi flavored vape it looks more like a cell phone from the early 2000s than a typical e-cigarette. It allows users to customize the screen background, see how many puffs of nicotine are left, and even track the device’s location using the included app. “Never lose your vape again!!!!” – Mk Smoke Shop announced in a Facebook post.
Far from a one-off novelty, the RAMA model is part of a wave of technologically sophisticated and ultra-potent disposable vaporizers that have begun appearing on the shelves of smoke shops and convenience stores across the U.S. in recent months, according to industry data, social media posts and other records viewed by WIRED.
Almost exclusively made in China, the vaporizers are colorful and feature eye-catching metallic finishes, spongy silicone textures, and rounded shapes that fit comfortably in the hand. But what really sets them apart are their LCD screens, which make the devices even more environmentally damaging than regular disposable vaporizers. And like the immense majority of all e-cigarettes available in stores, they are technically illegal and have not been approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
These so-called sharp vaporizers are a product of the innovation boom taking place in China $28 billion e-cigarette export industry. This was partly due to lax United States enforcement of nicotine laws. According to the China Chamber of Commerce for Electronics, the United States accounts for almost two-thirds of China’s vape exports. The CDC Foundation estimates that between 2020 and 2023, sales of tobacco-free vaporizers in the U.S. increased over 60%, increasing from 11.2 million to 18 million pieces.
As competition intensifies in the US market, vape manufacturers in Shenzhen have had to find ways to differentiate their products. So they developed vaporizers that were cheaper, better designed, and delivered higher doses of nicotine compared to their predecessors. In many cases, these innovations have enabled them to advance in the e-cigarette value chain.
Robert Jackler, professor emeritus of head and neck surgery at Stanford University and founder of interdisciplinarity Search party researching the impact of tobacco advertising, he found that American companies have long been producing vapes in Shenzhen. However, after the Chinese government banned the sale of flavored vaporizers in 2022, Chinese suppliers began operating focusing more in the field of marketing own products directly to foreign customers.
“They cut out the Americans,” Jackler says. According to the Associated Press last year, there were over 9,000 types of vaping products available for sale in the US, which is almost threefold increase from 2020.
The spread of disposable flavored vaporizers from China has alarmed lawmakers in both the U.S. and Europe. Regulators say they are particularly concerned about the impact these devices have on children, who may find sweet flavors and flashy designs particularly appealing.