The race to add new features to the exploding vape sector has begun, triggering blowback in Sacramento this year.
Incidents involving video game features on vapes and vapes that look like school supplies have lawmakers seeing red. A new bill would hit distributors with $50,000 fines for selling a vape with a video game on it. And the bill could affect the millions of Californians who increasingly prefer the devices to smoking cannabis flower.
A “vape” means a miniature, battery-powered device that aerosolizes cannabis oil—or nicotine—for inhalation. Retailers have sold them for about 15 years. Vape sales have eclipsed cannabis flower bud sales for the first time in California in 2026.
Vapes comprise a major sector of the $30 billion legal U.S. cannabis industry, with intense competition on price, flavors, and features. Chinese vape manufacturers innovate constantly, fill orders, and ship the devices to the U.S. Legal and illicit operators fill the devices and sell them.
The race to make vapes more fun
The new vape brand Boutiq made waves at March’s Hall of Flowers cannabis industry trade show in Ventura, California.
Boutiq offers a small, colorful, triple-chambered device with a detailed LED screen that displays your “blinker” score. A “blinker” means using a vape long enough to trigger its automatic shutoff mechanism.
Boutiq did not respond to requests for comment.
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“Ripping blinkers” is the modern version of taking 6-foot bong loads, or rolling 4-gram hash hole joints, said cannabis expert Terryn Buxton, founder and owner of Oakland Extracts.
“It’s hitting a vape cart so long that the light starts to blink,” Buxton explained. “It’s warning you about overuse. It comes from the culture of young people wanting to get as high as possible. The tradition started with nicotine vape tricks and blowing huge clouds.”
Buxton has friends who heavily use nicotine vapes, which feature “crazy” flavors like “fruit punch unicorn piss” with full digital screens. Those features influence the market for legal THC vapes, he said.
“All of it is set to blow up,” he said. “Those things are selling like hotcakes.”
What the California vapes ban does
However, Boutiq launched into some choppy regulatory waters this year.
California Assembly Bill 2667 would “prohibit a person from selling a vape product in this state by (A) imitating a product that is not a vape product … B) using branding that is known to appeal to minors, or (C) including interactive video game capabilities within a vape product, as provided.”
Legislators moved the bill quickly during two unanimous committee votes. The law calls for fines of $50,000 for distributors who run afoul of the rules.
“Nobody is opposing it,” said Ellen Komp of non-profit cannabis advocacy group California NORML. “It sailed through its hearing.”
Bill advocates submitted images of illicit market vapes disguised as a highlighter, a mechanical pencil, and one that appeared to be running an 8-bit-style video game.
“I’m not surprised,” said Buxton. “I don’t like that. We do not need things designed to encourage kids to use it in school.”
Legal operators worry they’ll take the hit
However, a blanket ban on interactive vaping only punishes lawful actors, Buxton said. Oakland Extracts sells 510-threaded vape cartridges, as well as gram jars of live rosin. Buxton intends to debut an all-in-one vape this year.
“The devil is in the details. This can end up just punishing people with a license,” Buxton said. “I do want something fun that has animations.”
It’s extremely difficult to stop the hardware coming over from China, or the illicit products in the street filled with either nicotine, alleged THC oil, or something else. Ten years after adult-use legalization in California, about half of all cannabis sales occur in the illicit market. Legal cannabis taxes in Los Angeles total 38 percent.
Buxton warned against heavy-handed policing of video game features. Video games have been around since the 1970s.
“A bunch of adults want to play games on their vape,” he said.
Komp advised legal cannabis vape manufacturers to be wary.
“The legislature is concerned about children having access to things that appeal to them in various ways,” she said.
Screen time comes to vaping
Boutiq leads a group of brands with small, colorful vapes that sport advanced LED screens.
Zalympix award-winning brand Wizard Trees, based in Los Angeles, launched their first vape this season. It also embraces the size and colors of the market-leading Elf Bar and Geek Bar nicotine vapes.
One side of the vape features an LED screen with a pixelated wizard. It’s available as a 1-gram, all-in-one vape in strains like Limelight. Wizard Trees did not respond to requests for comment.
Holy Water, a California State Fair Golden Bear award-winning brand, helped lead the trend into stylish, small vapes.
Holy Water vapes feature a colorful stained-glass design with a customized LED readout that displays temperature levels. The new ones come in small bible-shaped boxes with a stash pouch, in an homage to the brand’s “weed is our religion” ethos.
Holy Water co-founder Mike Yanovsky said the brand is satirical and they are “trying to bring humor back into cannabis.”
Yanovsky said that for some people, cannabis is their religion, and “it’s fun to play off that.”
Holy Water’s next device will have an airplane mode, dab mode, terp mode, and turbo mode.
“We’re excited to keep raising the bar,” he said.
It’s an era where you can play Doom on a pregnancy test. Everything is not only possible, but probable. Voters, of course, get the last word on how much fun is legal.