3 min read
Compliance Costs: What It Actually Takes to Follow Nicotine Regulations—and Who Can't Afford To
The PMTA process costs $1-10 million per product. State licensing, age verification, and reporting requirements add thousands more. The compliance costs of nicotine regulation create a market accessible only to the largest corporations.
A small vape manufacturer with ten products, five nicotine strengths, and three flavors faces a PMTA bill of $10-50 million—for a business that might generate $2 million in annual revenue. **The compliance costs of nicotine regulation are a market-exclusion mechanism. They don't regulate the market. They regulate who gets to participate in it—and the participants are exclusively the largest corporations. The independent manufacturers who created the vaping category are being regulated out of existence.**
