A decade of organising

Beyond the courtroom — AVI's public campaigns

Litigation and policy letters are one half of AVI's work; the other is getting in front of the public and the press directly — protests, seminars, delegations to government, and campaigns that turned vapers' own health data and lived experience into evidence. This is that record, city by city and year by year.

2019

India Vape Ban Protest — six cities, one day

AVI organised a coordinated, same-day protest against the newly promulgated ENDS ban ordinance across six Indian cities, arguing the decision was anti-science and taken without evidence or public consultation.

Vapers protesting the e-cigarette ban at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, 28 September 2019 — Delhi

Vapers protesting the e-cigarette ban in Mumbai, 28 September 2019 — Mumbai

Vapers protesting the e-cigarette ban in Kolkata, 28 September 2019 — Kolkata

Vapers protesting the e-cigarette ban in Hyderabad, 28 September 2019 — Hyderabad

Vapers protesting the e-cigarette ban in Chennai, 28 September 2019 — Chennai

Vapers protesting the e-cigarette ban in Bengaluru, 28 September 2019 — Bengaluru

Read the full story

Days after the central government promulgated the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Ordinance, 2019 — bypassing Parliament and banning sale, manufacture, import, export, distribution and advertisement of ENDS, with penalties of up to a year in jail — AVI organised a nationwide protest at Jantar Mantar, Delhi and in parallel venues in five other cities, all on the same afternoon.

City leads and volunteer coordinators ran each location: Jantar Mantar in Delhi, the Mumbai Marathi Patrakar Sangh in Mumbai, Lamakaan in Hyderabad, Freedom Park in Bengaluru, Raj Park Hotel in Chennai, and the Press Club in Kolkata. Organisers requested and received local police permission in advance, and set clear ground rules for participants: no minors, no littering, no vaping in public during the protest itself, and calm, respectful engagement with anyone who asked questions.

The protest’s core argument, carried on placards and in the accompanying press release: 65 nations regulate e-cigarettes rather than banning them; the ordinance was rushed through without the research or public hearings a policy affecting an estimated 11 crore Indian smokers should have had; and the ban would not stop use, only push it into an unregulated black market with no age checks or quality control — exactly what happened in the years that followed.

Research drive

#WarOnTar Campaign

1 Sept 2024

A crowdsourced lung-health data drive: AVI asked vapers and ex-smokers to take two low-cost tests and share the results, building a real-world evidence base to present to the health ministry.

Read the full story

Two out of three people who smoke die from it — and AVI’s argument has always been that switching to vaping significantly reduces that risk. The #WarOnTar campaign set out to make that case with real-world data rather than argument alone: vapers and ex-smokers were asked to take two low-cost lung-health tests (₹1,200–1,500) at a centre near them, which doubled as a free health check for participants, and submit the results through a confidential AVI survey form.

The goal was twofold — give participants a genuine read on their own lung health, including any lingering effects of past smoking, and build a dataset large enough to be worth putting in front of India’s health ministry as part of AVI’s ongoing push against the vaping ban.

Delegation

AVI delegation meets the Union Minister of State for Health

1 Nov 2020 · New Delhi

An AVI delegation met then Union Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel to press the case for evidence-based regulation of e-cigarettes rather than prohibition, alongside a wider push published as an India-focused policy report.

Read the full story

Around the same time AVI’s India-specific policy input was cited in a global report on tobacco harm reduction, an AVI delegation secured a direct meeting with Anupriya Patel, then Union Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare, to make the case in person: that a blanket ban denies India’s roughly 27 crore tobacco users — of whom over 10 crore smoke — access to a lower-risk way to quit or switch, and that regulation, not prohibition, is what the evidence from the 65-plus nations that allow e-cigarettes actually supports.

Seminar

Policy Dialogue on E-Cigarettes Ban in India

3 Sept 2020 · New Delhi

A public seminar convened by AVI to bring policymakers, a Delhi High Court lawyer and a cardio-metabolic physician together to discuss the one-year-old ENDS ban's real-world impact.

Samrat Chowdhery being interviewed by a television crew at an AVI Policy Dialogue on E-Cigarettes, New Delhi — Media interview at AVI's Policy Dialogue on E-Cigarettes, New Delhi

Read the full story

Roughly a year into the national ENDS ban, AVI convened a public policy dialogue in New Delhi to bring together the range of expertise the original ban decision had left out: AVI’s director (who had become president of the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations’ (INNCO) governing board two months earlier) on policy and consumer advocacy; Dr Rohan Sequeira, a cardio-metabolic physician at Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital, on the clinical case for tobacco harm reduction; Dr Farrukh Khan, a senior Delhi High Court lawyer, on the pending legal challenges; and Kanav Rishi Kumar, an ex-smoker who had switched to vaping, speaking to lived experience.

The event drew press coverage and framed the questions AVI would keep raising for years afterward: what evidence, if any, justified the ban, and what had actually happened to smokers and vapers in the year since it took effect.

Digital mobilisation

#WorldVapeDay — India

30 May 2020

AVI's annual participation in World Vape Day (May 30), coordinating an India-specific social media push, a livestream of quit stories, and direct emails to MPs and MLAs alongside the global consumer movement.

Read the full story

Every May 30, vapers and ex-smokers around the world mark World Vape Day — a coordinated push by consumer advocates to put lived quit-and-switch stories in front of the public and policymakers on the same day, in one voice. AVI ran India’s participation as a multi-part campaign: a Twitter push tying into the global effort, an evening livestream where vapers spoke for a few minutes each about their own quit journeys, a social-media sensitisation drive aimed at the Indian public, and a ready-made email template supporters could send straight to their MPs and MLAs.

The campaign leaned on the same core argument each year: with an estimated 42 million vapers worldwide standing behind harm reduction, and roughly 11 crore Indian smokers who could benefit from access to safer alternatives, the goal was to make that constituency impossible to ignore.

Research drive

Airport Confiscation Reports — crowdsourcing the evidence for the flight ban case

17 Jan 2020 – 25 May 2023 · Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Kochi, Chennai, Pune

Within days of the flight ban taking effect, AVI opened a public form asking vapers to report having their devices confiscated at Indian airports. Over three years it logged 60 incidents nationwide — the evidentiary record that led directly to the ongoing Delhi High Court case against the ban.

Read the full story

Days after the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security began enforcing a ban on carrying e-cigarettes on flights in January 2020, AVI opened a short public form asking affected travellers to report what had happened: which airport, which airline and flight, roughly when, which official confiscated the device, and what exactly was taken. It also asked two forward-looking questions — would you be willing to join a court case against these confiscations, and would you contribute funds toward one.

Over the next three years the form collected 60 individual reports from across the country. Mumbai and Delhi accounted for the largest share (15 and 10 reports respectively), with Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Kochi, Chennai and Pune also represented. A number of respondents were international travellers — from the UK, the US, Germany and elsewhere — caught out mid-transit with no warning that a personal vape would be taken at security. Of the 60, 42 (70%) said they’d be willing to join a legal challenge, and 38 (63%) were willing to help fund one — a genuine base of affected consumers, not a hypothetical one, at a point when AVI was still deciding whether this fight was worth mounting.

That base is what it became: AVI drew on these reports to identify and brief the two consumer petitioners now named in its ongoing Delhi High Court case against the flight ban — the same underlying complaint dozens of respondents had already documented, now argued in court as evidence the ban lacks any basis in demonstrated in-flight risk.

Press conference

State-ban press conferences — Karnataka and beyond

1 Jan 2018 – 31 Dec 2020 · Bengaluru

As individual states moved to ban e-cigarette sale ahead of, and alongside, the national law, AVI delegates held press conferences in the affected states to present research and case studies directly to local media.

AVI presenting research and case studies on e-cigarettes/ENDS at a press conference, Press Club of Bangalore — Presenting research and case studies at the Press Club of Bangalore, in response to Karnataka's state-level ban

Read the full story

Before the 2019 national ordinance, several Indian states — Karnataka among them — moved on their own to restrict or ban e-cigarette sale. AVI delegates responded city by city, holding press conferences to walk local media through the research and case studies the state decisions had not accounted for, arguing the same case made nationally: that regulation, not prohibition, was the evidence-based path, and that state bans would push existing users toward an unregulated market rather than reduce use.

Campaign materials

Ready-to-post graphics from AVI's campaigns — save any of these and share them on your own social media. No permission needed. For more THR shareables beyond AVI's own, see vaep.info/shareables.

Made your own poster?

Send it to contact@vapeindia.org and we may add it here for others to use too. A few guidelines:

Square (1:1), at least 1080×1080px, PNG or JPG
Claims should be evidence-based — link a source if it's a statistic
No photos of vapes, pouches or other devices — text/graphics only, to stay clear of PECA's advertising restrictions
No targeting individuals by name or photo
Credit AVI (logo or "vapeindia.org") somewhere on the design

Get involved, beyond funds or a testimonial

Campaigns like these run on more than money and stories — AVI also needs legal, medical, media/PR and admin expertise, people willing to organise or show up locally, and just good ideas. If you can offer any of that, tell us what and where.

Fill out the form →