What is PACT Act?
The PACT Act is a US law requiring sellers who ship vaping products across state lines to register federally and with each state, and to report their shipments.
Last checked 11 October 2026
Also calledPrevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act
A tobacco-trafficking law from 2010 that, since 2021, reaches any device delivering “any other substance”, and the public register that makes its absence checkable.
Written and reviewed by Traceleaf research · last reviewed October 12, 2026
Why it matters
PACT registration is a public list, so a distributor shipping interstate while absent from it is a documented gap rather than an allegation.
What the PACT Act is, and what it was for
The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act is a tax-enforcement statute before it is anything else. Its logic is that interstate mail-order tobacco let sellers skip the excise taxes a state levies on its own retailers, so the remedy was not a prohibition but a paper trail: register before you ship, report what you shipped, and do it with every state you ship into.
That design is why it is useful for tracing. A statute that prohibits something produces enforcement actions, which are sparse and slow. A statute that requires registration produces a list, and a list can be checked against a company that is visibly shipping.
How a cigarette statute reaches a cannabis vape
Read the operative words: an electronic device, an aerosolised solution, any other substance. The clause that carries the law into cannabis hardware is “or any other substance”, and the clause that carries it into bare cartridges and empty hardware is the component sentence. The one carve-out in subparagraph (C) is for products the FDA has approved as cessation or therapeutic products and that are sold solely as such.
What an absence from the register does and does not establish
This is the most useful and the most easily overstated signal on the site. A distributor that is visibly moving product across state lines and does not appear on the register is a documented gap between two records, one showing movement, one showing no registration. That is a fact about two lists.
It is not a finding of non-compliance. Registers lag, names differ from trading names, a parent may hold the registration a subsidiary ships under, and the register searched may not be the one that would carry it. Traceleaf therefore publishes the count of tracked importers with no PACT registration on file as an absence in the records searched, and each importer of record carries its own ports, volumes and registration state so a reader can see the gap rather than take the number's word for it.
The federal register and a state licence are also different objects and answer different questions. A company can be on one and absent from the other, which is why the state pages are a separate check and why the volume figures, total imported units and the share going to importers with no state licence, are reported separately from the PACT count.
Questions people ask
- Does the PACT Act apply to cannabis vapes?
- Its definition is written around the device. 15 U.S.C. § 375(7)(A) covers any electronic device that, through an aerosolized solution, delivers “nicotine, flavor, or any other substance” to a user inhaling from it, and subparagraph (B) extends that to any component, liquid, part or accessory of such a device.
- Who has to register, and with whom?
- ATF states that anyone who sells, transfers or ships cigarettes, ENDS or smokeless tobacco in interstate commerce for profit must register with ATF before doing so, and registration also runs to the tobacco tax administrator of each state shipped into.
- If a company is not on the PACT register, is it breaking the law?
- That is not something an absence from a list establishes. It records a gap between a company that is visibly shipping and a register that does not list it. Registers lag, legal names differ from trading names, and a parent may hold a registration a subsidiary ships under.
Sources
Every claim on this page about a statute, an agency instrument or a tariff instrument rests on one of these, and each one is a document you can open. Where a claim could not be checked against a source, it was removed rather than hedged.
§ 375(7)(A) defines an electronic nicotine delivery system as “any electronic device that, through an aerosolized solution, delivers nicotine, flavor, or any other substance to the user inhaling from the device”, and § 375(2)(A)(ii)(II) folds that device into the term “cigarette” for the whole chapter.
The administering agency's own statement of who must register before selling, transferring or shipping in interstate commerce, and that registration precedes the activity.