Georgia communities are paying the price for illicit vapes
Having spent more than three decades working at the intersection of faith, social justice and community safety, I have learned a simple but often ignored truth: When public policy fails to account for human behavior, the consequences almost always fall hardest on the communities already carrying the greatest burdens.
Today, we’re watching that pattern repeat itself.
Across the country, there has been a rapid and largely unchecked rise in illicit vapor products, many of them saturating low-income and minority communities with alarming precision.
While public voices and policymakers must continue to demand accountability from tobacco companies, we must also confront an equally important reality: When legal alternatives are restricted or made inaccessible, unregulated markets inevitably rush in to fill the void.
History has taught us this lesson time and time again. Prohibition, particularly when applied without nuance, rarely eliminates demand. Instead, it drives that demand underground, where products go unregulated, criminal enterprises profit and vulnerable communities bear the cost.
Not all nicotine products carry the same risk
Unregulated and improperly manufactured vapor devices, often imported and sold without oversight, are flooding neighborhoods across Georgia. These products are not only a public health concern; they are also a community safety issue. And it is a social justice issue because these products do not spread evenly across society.
They disproportionately target communities where regulatory gaps, economic vulnerability and limited access to credible information create fertile ground for exploitation. The result is that the very communities already facing disparities in health outcomes and overexposure to criminal justice systems are once again the ones most heavily impacted, bearing the compounded burden of increased health risks, illicit market activity and weakened neighborhood stability.
Illicit markets do not operate in isolation. They are often intertwined with organized crime, money laundering and the kind of street-level activity that erodes trust and destabilizes already vulnerable neighborhoods. For those of us who work closely with communities, this is not theoretical.
It is real, and it is happening now.
Unfortunately, much of today’s political discourse has become zero-sum, and that dynamic is producing unintended consequences. In many cases, policymakers are overlooking a fundamental public health principle: Not all nicotine products carry the same level of risk.
Experts suggest that combustible cigarettes remain the most dangerous form of nicotine consumption, responsible for staggering rates of preventable disease and death. Smoke-free alternatives, including vapor products, are not risk-free, but they exist on a different point along the risk continuum. This distinction is recognized by public health experts across the globe.
Harm reduction is not about endorsing tobacco or nicotine use. It’s about reducing preventable harm in the real world, among real people. It’s about ensuring that the most dangerous and unregulated products, often illegally imported from China and aggressively marketed throughout the United States, do not end up in the hands of young people, particularly in underserved communities.
Sweden shows a model for tackling smoking cessation
We have already embraced harm reduction in other areas of public health, including HIV prevention and substance use recovery. In those contexts, we acknowledged that progress is often achieved through pragmatism rather than moral absolutism.
Yet an abstinence-only mindset continues to dominate the conversation. When prohibition is prioritized over thoughtful, proportionate regulation, we risk repeating the same mistakes that fueled illicit drug markets and empowered criminal networks.
Australia provides a cautionary example: Sweeping prohibitions and extreme taxation have fueled a massive and entrenched illicit tobacco market, undermining public health goals and straining law enforcement resources. Sweden, by contrast, has embraced tobacco harm reduction by encouraging adult smokers to switch to lower-risk alternatives and is now on the cusp of becoming smoke-free, achieving historic reductions in smoking without a corresponding rise in illicit trade. Georgia could learn from this.
What is needed now is balance, grounded in evidence, guided by experience and informed by the realities on the ground.
Faith leaders, policymakers and public health advocates may approach this issue from different perspectives, but we share a common responsibility: to protect life, promote safety and avoid policies that unintentionally deepen harm.
Allowing illicit vapor markets to grow unchecked does none of those things.
If we fail to address this growing challenge with honesty, humility and evidence-based policymaking, the consequences will continue to surface in the very communities that can least afford them.
And that is a cost we should not be willing to accept.
The Rev. Markel Hutchins is a human and civil rights leader and chairman and CEO of MovementForward Inc.