After Massachusetts authorities released a report showing a sharp rise in flavored cigarette and vape seizures under a recent bipartisan statewide ban, a former ATF official and a network of law enforcement veterans specializing in contraband called into question why the ban remains.
An annual multi-agency report from the Bay State’s Illegal Tobacco Task Force showed vape seizures up by more than 200,000 – largely due to large-scale seizures – since 2023, while smokeless tobacco and standard cigarette seizures were down.
Calculations by the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network found that Massachusetts police seized 279,432 vape units in fiscal year 2024, up from about 1,300 the year prior.
Former New York City Sheriff Edgar Domenech, who is also a former ATF official who focused on tobacco and related contraband, told Fox News Digital the findings showed the illegal vape market is “exploding,” and that when the Bay State became the first to outlaw flavored tobacco, it was a clarion call for cartels and smugglers to say, “[we’re] open for business.”
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“A 21,000 percent increase in smuggling proves once and for all that the Massachusetts flavor ban experiment has been an embarrassing catastrophe,” said Domenech, who had been appointed to his Big Apple post by then-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg and now works with Georgetown University.
“They are spending so much time seizing so much product they literally can’t find a place to store the contraband,” he said.
While the rule of law is important, sometimes new laws themselves may need revisiting, he suggested.
Without the ability to levy taxes on what is now an illegal product that remains ubiquitous elsewhere in New England, bordering states like New Hampshire – less than an hour from Boston – seek to reap the tax benefits of Massachusetts’ ban as customers go a little out of their way to buy their products, he said.
Prohibiting adult products like vapes “never works,” Domenech added. “It moves sales out of the stores and into the streets.”
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In January, Boston police in the Drug Control Unit arrested a 58-year-old Dorchester man as part of a raid that netted 50 grams of crack and 700 packages of “illegally possessed unstamped menthol cigarettes.” The man, Parrish Jones, was charged with trafficking cigarettes.
Separately, a Hopkinton man was arrested in June for allegedly failing to pay nearly $500,000 in excise taxes after he allegedly sought out-of-state distributors in order to market vape-type products, according to FOX Boston.
The ban itself went into effect in December 2019, as the Massachusetts Public Health Council enacted new sales restrictions on vapes and flavored tobacco.
The panel was able to do so after then-Gov. Charles Baker – a Republican – signed a bill from the Democratic legislature “modernizing tobacco control.”
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More recently, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office filed a complaint against a vape company in 2024 for allegedly ignoring the flavored tobacco ban. The office previously sued several other companies as well, according to a statement.
In November, several Massachusetts lawmakers announced plans to file legislation this year to phase out all tobacco and nicotine sales in the state, beginning with those Bay Staters who are currently underage to begin with.
Sen. Jason Lewis, D-Middlesex, Rep. Kate Lipper-Garabedian, D-Melrose, and Rep. Tommy Vitolo, D-Brookline, are collaborating on the bill, according to NBC Boston.
Fox News Digital reached out to the AG’s office for further response but did not hear back by press time.
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