As schools across the country open their doors for another year, teachers, coaches, and parents are confronting a major threat to the health and safety of America’s kids: illicit vapes disguised as highlighters, video game controllers, and other toys designed to appeal to youth.
They are hiding in plain sight in store fronts of smoke shops that traffic in other forms of drugs, firearms, criminal activity and the violence that comes with it. Lawmakers, community leaders, and parents are starting to push back, but the threat is still very much on shelves.
This concern isn’t confined to a single party or state. In December, Communities United for Smart Policy (CUSP) released a nationwide survey of parents that showed overwhelming concern about the spread of illicit vape products and strong support for tougher enforcement against the stores that sell them. These parents view illicit vapes as a direct threat to community safety, and favor legislation and enforcement actions to remove these unregulated products from their neighborhoods.
Separately, another poll by the Protecting America Initiative confirms this is one of the rare, genuinely bipartisan issues left in America with 80 percent of voters wanting stronger enforcement on illegal vapes and the smoke shops that sell them.
I recently moderated a panel at the U.S. Conference of Mayors Annual Meeting with mayors from communities across America who are rightly treating these shops as the new “broken windows” of community decline. Richmond, Virginia’s Mayor Danny Avula described how his “Operation Vaporize” initiative used local ordinances and permitting laws to shut these stores down and how armed robberies dropped as a result.
Tampa, Florida’s Mayor Jane Castor, a former police chief, laid out how these cash-heavy businesses double as fronts for broader criminal activity in cities across the country. And Columbia, South Carolina’s Mayor Daniel Rickenmann discussed his state’s directory law, which tells store owners exactly which vapes they’re allowed to sell and gives law enforcement a clear tool to crack down on those who don’t comply.
Laws without enforcement, however, are just words. State vape directories and local ordinances only work if illicit products are identified, reported, and pulled from shelves. Nicotine-copycat and analog products that are now appearing in these vape shops demonstrate how bad actors have remained one step ahead of the law. By the time enforcement catches up to one illicit product, unscrupulous manufacturers have already developed the next using new compounds, new names, or new packaging.
That is why we have launched a new online toolkit to help parents and other concerned community members close the gap between community knowledge and official enforcement. Parents often know which stores are selling to kids or displaying suspicious products long before regulators do.
Through maps that can help reveal smoke shop clusters near schools, a social media reporting guide to identity where kids are actually being targeted online, and a visual guide to recognize the red flags of these products in disguise before these products reach kids, we are empowering parents.
The Trump administration has taken meaningful steps to stop the influx of illicit Chinese vapes into our communities, with the FDA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection seizing millions of unauthorized products. In a six-month stretch in 2025, over 9 million illicit vapes were confiscated, valued at approximately $127 million. Congress backed that effort with $200 million in dedicated FDA enforcement funding. But money alone isn’t enough.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are now rightly asking hard questions about how those dollars are being spent, and law enforcement groups across the country are pushing to ensure more of that funding reaches state and local agencies, the officers actually walking into the smoke shops selling to our kids. The FDA should answer those questions with real transparency, and make sure this funding empowers those working to make our communities safer.
Rep. Mary Bono is the Chairwoman of Communities United for Smart Policy (CUSP) which advocates for commonsense solutions that promote safer, stronger communities. She served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1998-2013 representing California’s 44th and 45th Congressional Districts.
