China’s Vape Offensive and the Mexican Cartel Pipeline: A Growing Threat to US Security
In Mexico, the cartels have found their perfect staging ground to capitalize on a low-risk, high-profit cash crop. Lax enforcement against illicit tobacco has created vast gray zones where cartels operate openly, stockpiling illicit goods, laundering profits, and planning cross-border smuggling with little fear of government intrusion.
For the past two decades, I have investigated and analyzed cartel operations in Mexico, and the national security implications of their complex trafficking networks on both sides of the border. I can say unequivocally: The trafficking of illegal Chinese vapes and counterfeit cigarettes from Mexico into the United States is no longer a side hustle for cartels like Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartel. It is a strategic operation.
Illicit Chinese vapes are now flowing across the U.S. border through the same hardened routes used for fentanyl and weapons, generating billions in revenue that fuel cartel violence and fund China’s rising ambitions.
In the past, Mexican cartels relied primarily on drugs to finance their empires, with cigarette smuggling as an ancillary enterprise. Today, they have expanded aggressively into lower-risk, high-reward commodities: illicit tobacco and disposable vapes. Tobacco smuggling now generates critical cash flow for criminal groups, while vapes—largely manufactured in China under state-controlled companies—represent a new and booming pipeline.
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