Nicotine products are evolving faster than the rules built to govern them, and platforms are caught in the gap. That was the focus of a session on emerging nicotine products at Marketplace Risk’s New York conference this month. The panel covered the new products showing up in ads and listings, the regulatory patchwork trying to keep pace, and what platforms can do to close the gap before it costs them.
Keep reading to learn more about this evolving landscape and how LegitScript can help.
September 22, 2026 | by LegitScript Folks
The Nicotine Products Platforms Are Missing
Nicotine now takes many shapes beyond a cigarette or a vape pen. Pouches, toothpicks, gummies, beverages, and breath strips are now common delivery formats, and many are marketed to look like wellness or performance products rather than nicotine products. That framing makes them hard for trust and safety teams to catch using standard keyword or category filters.
The panel also flagged behavior beyond the products themselves:
- Proxy advertising, where tobacco companies run “cessation” public service announcements that function as brand marketing.
- Product placement in podcasts and video content, often without disclosure of the creator’s relationship to the manufacturer.
The Regulatory Landscape
The FDA regulates nicotine products through two pathways: recreational tobacco products and medicinal smoking cessation products. Both are backlogged. Over 46 million products are currently awaiting Premarket Tobacco Product Application review, and only 48 vaporizers have been approved to date. That imbalance makes consistent enforcement difficult even for regulators actively working the problem.
Other pressure points platforms need to track:
- The PACT Act, which makes mailing e-cigarettes within the US nearly impossible and limits how these products show up on US marketplaces.
- State-level laws, which vary and change independently of federal action.
- Flavored vape rules and synthetic nicotine, an area where enforcement has shifted recently and where platforms can’t assume last year’s policy still applies.
The US and EU also diverge on synthetic nicotine specifically. A product restricted in one market might be sold freely in the other, which matters for any platform operating across both.
Want to learn more? Register for our webinar on ENDS regulations.
Building Policy That Keeps Up
The panel walked through what it takes to build nicotine policy that doesn’t fall out of date the moment a new product hits the market:
- Start with the legal landscape as the foundation, not a business goal.
- Map requirements across every region the platform operates in, not just the US.
- Future-proof the policy by asking where the category is headed, not just where it stands today.
- Bring in senior leadership early, since nicotine policy often intersects with revenue decisions.
- Compare against how other platforms are handling the same products.
On enforcement, the panel pointed to specific tactics bad actors use to get around policy, including miscategorized listings and obfuscated product names that avoid triggering a review. Payment processing adds another layer of risk, since platforms accepting ads or payments for these products take on regulatory, litigation, and reputational exposure even when the violation isn’t obvious at first glance.
Grow More Confidently With LegitScript
LegitScript’s Platform Risk Solutions were built for categories like this one, where the product, the marketing, and the regulation are all moving at once. Our Ad Monitoring, Marketplace Monitoring, and Risk and Policy Advisory services help platforms spot what’s slipping through, understand where the regulatory lines actually sit, and build policy that holds up as the category shifts.
You don’t have to track every new nicotine product or every regulatory update on your own. Talk to our team about how LegitScript can help you stay ahead of what’s coming next.
