South America has made substantial progress in opposition to smoking, however its method to safer nicotine alternate options stays fragmented and regularly contradictory. Governments have raised tobacco taxes, launched graphic warnings and expanded smoke-free legal guidelines, but a number of proceed to ban vaping and heated-tobacco merchandise whereas leaving cigarettes broadly out there.
Throughout the broader Americas, grownup tobacco-use prevalence fell from 21.3% in 2010 to 16.6% in 2022—a 22.1% relative discount—in response to the Pan American Well being Group. South America additionally grew to become the primary WHO subregion during which each nation established nationwide legal guidelines requiring smoke-free indoor public locations and workplaces.
Progress, nevertheless, has undoubtedly been uneven. In 2023, Chile reported a tobacco-use prevalence of 27.2% amongst people aged 15 and older, whereas Brazil has seen its smoking price drop to about 9%. These variations spotlight that you could’t consider regional tobacco management simply by a single quantity. In addition they increase a bigger query: ought to tobacco management focus solely on eliminating nicotine, or ought to it supply adults lower-risk methods of consuming it?
A divided marketplace for nicotine alternate options
Like different areas of the world, South America doesn’t have a unified regulatory mannequin. Brazil continues to ban the manufacture, importation, promoting and sale of digital cigarettes, beneath guidelines reaffirmed by ANVISA in 2024. Comparable prohibitions or extreme restrictions have traditionally utilized in Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela and several other neighbouring markets.
Different international locations have pursued regulation relatively than outright prohibition, making a authorized however managed marketplace for merchandise resembling vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches. Regulation might embody age limits, well being warnings, promoting restrictions, product registration and taxation.
Earlier this yr, Argentina signalled a probably necessary change by establishing a nationwide registry overlaying tobacco and nicotine merchandise in Might 2026. Its listed classes embody e-cigarette units and liquids, heated-tobacco units and sticks, and nicotine pouches. The decision explicitly addresses traceability, product security, and the discount of smoking-related hurt. The registry doesn’t, by itself, resolve each authorized and implementation query, however it factors in the direction of supervised regulation relatively than an invisible market.
Brazil’s banned however very seen vape market
A peer-reviewed research from 2025 famous that imposing Brazil’s ban has been (shock shock) ineffective and identified that the Federal Income Service seized almost two million unlawful e-cigarettes in 2024.
Brazil supplies a transparent instance of this example. Even with its gross sales prohibition, vaping merchandise can nonetheless be discovered by means of social media, casual distributors, and supply providers. A peer-reviewed research from 2025 famous that imposing Brazil’s ban has been (shock shock) ineffective and identified that the Federal Income Service seized almost two million unlawful e-cigarettes in 2024. These confiscations point out a big provide exists, although they will’t decide the whole measurement of the market or how a lot was intercepted.
One of many largest discoveries occurred on the Port of Santos in December 2024. Customs officers inspected two containers declared as carrying toys, instruments, pc equipment, automotive elements and musical devices. Inside have been roughly 450,000 vaping units and refills containing liquids labelled with nicotine concentrations of two% and 5%. The cargo was valued by authorities at round R$45 million.
The seizure illustrates how prohibition modifications a product’s recorded identification earlier than it reaches customers. Units could also be declared as batteries, electronics or unrelated merchandise, leaving regulators unable to confirm their producer, substances, nicotine energy or route into the nation.
Manufacturers resembling Elfbar, Misplaced Mary, Ignite and Vaporesso seem on casual Brazilian gross sales channels, however a well-known packaging design supplies no assure of authenticity. A tool could also be a real product imported illegally, a counterfeit or an unverified manufacturing batch. Prohibition removes the traceability that might distinguish between them.
Previous smuggling routes accommodate new merchandise
The unlawful vape commerce didn’t develop from scratch. It has tailored routes related to cigarette trafficking, particularly across the Triple Frontier linking Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. For many years, this space has supported networks of transporters, warehouses, intermediaries and casual border staff. Paraguay developed into a serious cigarette producer and distribution centre, whereas illicit merchandise moved into Brazil by street, river and throughout the world surrounding Lake Itaipu.
Digital cigarettes can use the identical infrastructure however are sometimes simpler to hide. Units may be divided into parts, packaged with client items, and offered by means of decentralised on-line networks. A bootleg transaction might due to this fact resemble atypical e-commerce by the point it reaches the client.
This commerce additionally has a social dimension. Border communities might rely on casual commerce the place formal employment is restricted. Drivers, couriers and loaders usually assume the best authorized threat whereas receiving comparatively little of the revenue. Stronger border enforcement alone is due to this fact unlikely to eradicate a market embedded in native livelihoods and sustained by client demand.
Regulating will increase accountability and security
Regulation wouldn’t abolish smuggling, however it may redirect a part of the market into accountable companies whereas permitting authorities to pay attention sources on genuinely non-compliant suppliers. Nicotine pouches, vapes, and heated-tobacco merchandise aren’t with out their risks, so it’s essential to have strict controls on youth entry. Nonetheless, flamable cigarettes pose a uniquely excessive threat as a result of burning tobacco creates the poisonous combine that results in most smoking-related cancers, coronary heart ailments, and respiratory issues.
South America now faces a alternative between prohibition and proportionate regulation. Its expertise reveals that banning alternate options doesn’t essentially make them disappear. As an alternative, merchandise might lose their names in customs paperwork, their traceability in warehouses and their security assurances on-line.
A progressive technique would retain robust cigarette controls whereas regulating alternate options in response to their precise dangers. Meaning imposing adult-only gross sales, controlling substances and nicotine energy, limiting youth-oriented advertising, gathering market information and taxing combustion most closely. Such a framework would shield younger individuals with out denying grownup people who smoke credible routes away from cigarettes.
The Value of Prohibition: Tobacco and Vape Crackdowns Are Fueling Black Markets and Endangering Public Well being
