CUSP Releases Toolkit to Help Parents, Communities Combat Illegal Vapes

CUSP recognizes that parents are on the front lines of the illegal vape crisis as they often know which stores are selling to kids or displaying suspicious products long before regulators do. The illegal vape market is hiding in plain sight with many of these products sold openly in neighborhood storefronts, marketed online, and packaged to mimic candy, snacks, juice boxes, toys, and video game controllers in order to target America’s youth.

That is why CUSP has released a new online toolkit, IllegalVapeAwareness.com, to empower parents and other concerned community members to help close the gap between community knowledge and official enforcement. 

The toolkit utilizes maps to help report and reveal smoke shop clusters near schools, a social media reporting guide to identity where kids are actually being targeted online, and a visual guide to recognize the red flags of these products in disguise before these products reach kids.

CUSP’s 2026 nationwide survey of parents showed overwhelming concern about the spread of illicit vape products and strong support for tougher enforcement against the stores that sell them. These parents view illicit vapes as a direct threat to community safety, and favor legislation and enforcement actions to remove these unregulated products from their neighborhoods. Separately, another poll by the Protecting America Initiative found this is a truly bipartisan issue with 80 percent of voters wanting stronger enforcement of illegal vapes and the smoke shops that sell them. 

CUSP looks forward to working with parents, community leaders and enforcement officials to utilize IllegalVapeAwareness.com to help give them new tools to spot the problem, report it and help local officials act.