California will soon become one of the toughest states in the country on disposable vapes, after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law banning their sale statewide by Jan. 1, 2028. The measure, AB 762, also blocks the import or manufacture of new or refurbished battery-embedded disposable nicotine vapes starting Jan. 1, 2027, giving retailers and manufacturers a runway before the rules take full effect.
The law is aimed squarely at the lithium batteries tucked inside single-use vapes, which regulators say can ignite at trash facilities and put waste-facility workers at risk, according to Palo Alto Online. Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, a Thousand Oaks Democrat, introduced the bill to curb the proliferation of hazardous waste tied to the devices, as reported by CalMatters. Irwin said the batteries cannot easily be removed, so they pose costly and hazardous safety issues at every point in the waste stream.
Rechargeable and refillable vape devices are not affected and will remain legal to sell after January 2028, per the same CalMatters account. That distinction matters for the industry, since disposable e-cigarettes made up 58.1 percent of U.S. e-cigarette sales — roughly 12.3 million units — as of June 2024, according to the CDC. About 12 million disposable vapes are sold nationally every month, the agency has found.
A 2016 Fire That Still Echoes Through the Debate
The law's backers keep pointing to a real-world example from a decade ago. In 2016, a lithium battery started a fire at a San Mateo County recycling facility, costing it $8.5 million and pushing up its annual insurance costs by almost $3 million, the article notes. That blaze, at the Shoreway Environmental Center in San Carlos, forced a four-month plant shutdown, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press.
Nick Lapis, a representative of Californians Against Waste and a co-sponsor of the bill, said the growing vape crisis is posing an existential threat to our waste and recycling system. The group has argued that fires at garbage facilities drive up costs for everyone, forcing residents to absorb the damage through higher garbage rates and taxpayer-funded cleanups, per the same CalMatters report.
Fines for Retailers, and a Divided Legislature
Retailers and distributors who violate the law will face a $500 fine for a first offense and as much as $2,000 for subsequent violations, a penalty structure confirmed in the bill's own text on the state legislature's site. The measure drew support from anti-smoking and healthcare groups, environmental advocacy organizations, and waste management authorities, but most Republican lawmakers voted against it.
State Sen. Shannon Grove, a Bakersfield Republican, argued during debate that the true issue is burning batteries, not disposable vapes specifically, pointing to the 2025 Moss Landing battery storage facility fire as evidence that burning batteries can cause catastrophic health impacts to communities. We need to start to make a real difference in the issue of climate change, contamination in our air, Grove said.
Opposition also came from law enforcement groups, the California Business Roundtable, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the California Fuels & Convenience Alliance. Alessandra Brichetto argued that disposable vapes already illegal under existing rules are the source of most litter and fires the measure targets, per a June report cited by CalMatters. Banning legal disposable devices, she said, would push consumers to buy illicit vape products instead. It assumes eliminating the legal market eliminates the problem, Brichetto said. It doesn't.
How Other Places Have Handled the Same Problem
California isn't the first government to try this. In April, Maine became the first state in the country to establish an extended producer responsibility program for vapes, according to Waste Dive. The United Kingdom went further, banning the sale of disposable vapes outright starting June 1 to curb sales to children and cut down on litter and improper disposal, per the BBC.
The results there have been mixed. Waste firm Suez reported 339 fires at its UK sites in the year covered by its report — more than one a day — and the BBC found that discarded vapes are still an all-too-common sight dumped on the street, in bins and at recycling centres six months after the ban took effect. Zurich Insurance UK likewise found that fires originating from vapes were still rising in the country despite the 2025 disposable-vape ban, according to CalMatters.
British regulators have acknowledged the enforcement gap. Single-use vapes are still being sold illegally in the UK, the BBC reported, prompting the government to announce a crackdown that could include fines and prison sentences for repeat violations, even as more than 10,500 vape takeback bins have been introduced in UK stores since April. Under the UK law, retailers and distributors face initial penalty fines of £200 for violations, a lighter first-offense penalty than the $500 California retailers will face, according to CNN.
Whether California's version fares better than Britain's remains to be seen, since the law's manufacturing ban does not take effect until 2027 and the sales ban not until 2028. For now, the state has set its deadline and its fines — and the fight over whether banning the legal market solves the underlying battery problem is far from settled.
