Standing outside a downtown Sacramento smoke shop, Angelos Clubb said he uses single-use devices, but he doesn’t feel they should be banned as a new law requires. He says the question he faces when it is time for a new one is where to put them after you're done using them.
“I'll admit I've thrown them away in the garbage and I've not thought about it,” Clubb said. “We got to have more designated areas for that.”
It’s a problem California lawmakers are trying to address with a new law that will phase disposable nicotine vapes out of stores across the state starting in 2028. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 762, which prohibits the sale of disposable vapes by 2028.
After it takes effect, retailers and distributors could be fined $500 for a first violation and up to $2,000 for subsequent violations. Retailers will have another year to sell existing inventory before sales become illegal on Jan. 1, 2028.
The law does not target all vapes, but more specifically the lithium-ion batteries sealed inside these devices. Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, the Thousand Oaks Democrat who wrote the law, said the biggest concern is what happens after people throw the devices away. She said batteries inside disposable vapes can spark fires in trash trucks, landfills and recycling facilities, leaving local governments and ratepayers with the bill.
“We estimate that waste facilities pay at least $95 million a year to clean up fires caused by exploding vapes,” Irwin said. “And so we thought there was an obvious solution.”
Irwin said she agrees people need more places to safely discard disposable vapes. But she said the bigger issue is how many of the batteries are being thrown away in the first place.
“What we're trying to do is just reduce the overall number of these batteries going into the trash,” she said.
Irwin said reusable vapes give people another option because the battery can be recharged instead of tossed out with the rest of the device.
But outside the Sacramento shop, the debate was more complicated. Clubb said he understands the environmental concerns and worries about vaping among young people. At the same time, he said disposable vapes are part of the income some neighborhood smoke shops rely on.
“It's like taking money out of the people that own the shops that have been making money off of it for a while now,” he said.
Michael Gibson said he vapes occasionally but does believe reusable systems, where consumers keep the battery and replace or refill a cartridge, make more sense environmentally. But he said disposables remain popular in part because they are convenient and readily available. He questioned whether removing them from licensed California stores will make them disappear altogether.
Gibson said he expects consumers will find other ways to get disposable vapes. Clubb said existing restrictions have not stopped prohibited flavored products from circulating.
When California's retail ban takes effect Jan. 1, 2028, reusable vaping systems will remain legal. Clubb said the debate for consumers centers on what to do with the devices they already have.
“I understand that they are environmentally unsafe,” he said, “but we have to figure out a way for [recycling them] to be feasible.”
