Based on testing, the companies behind IK Tech claim that the process has a 100 percent success rate in age verification, more or less rendering the technology foolproof. “The FDA told us this was the pure technology they were looking for,” Wang says. “This is word-for-word what he said when we met him.” The FDA did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
But Glantz isn’t at all convinced that these protections will work.
“The FDA is just showing its pro-industry bias,” Glantz says. “If I were running the FDA, I would ban these devices from having Bluetooth capability any time. There are a number of ways this could go south. Every technological improvement has a solution.”
The verification features will only be tied to one person, so when the vape is on, that person can share a puff with anyone nearby without having to verify their age. At that point, Wang says it comes down to personal responsibility.
“You really have to trust that person’s responsibility,” Wang says. “If it’s a person 21 or older, that’s fine, but if you actually want to hand it off to someone younger, you’re being really irresponsible.”
Wang says the goal is to implement additional features like geo-fencing into the verification process, which would force Vape to turn off near a school or on an airplane. In the future, there are plans to license this biometric verification technology to other e-cigarette companies. The technology may also evolve to include fingerprint readers and expand to other product categories; Wang suggests guns, which have a long history of age-verification features not quite working.
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The timeline for when the Ike Tech will actually hit the world – and how much it will cost when added to a vape cartridge – is still unclear. Wang says there are already partnerships in place with two nicotine companies, but he wouldn’t say if or when that would come to fruition. “In 2026, there will be a clear indication of when our solution will be approved and how many other brands will license our technology.”
He believes Wang’s ideal version of vape would be a safer, cleaner way to take nicotine.
“In the industry, we have a saying: ‘Nicotine has never killed a single person,'” Wang says. “By and large, e-cigarettes are a safe way to consume nicotine.”
Glantz refuted that notion by bringing up practices such as “smoking topography”, where nicotine companies track how smokers puff the product differently, then control how much nicotine is dispensed at a time to maximize addiction potential.
He also raises the fundamental problem that e-cigarettes and vapes are much cleaner than traditional cigarettes. While the problem with cigarettes and cheap vapes may be caused by other chemicals, nicotine itself is not a harmless substance.
“You can’t make a healthy e-cigarette; it’s impossible,” says Glantz. “It’s true that nicotine is not a carcinogen, but it has all kinds of adverse cardiovascular effects. Nicotine messes up your nervous system.”
In order for nicotine to be absorbed as a vapor, it must be broken down into very fine particles. That’s what heating does, and those particles can have all kinds of adverse health effects.
“There are all these other implications that are extremely serious that no one is really thinking about,” says Glantz. “Even if the age-verification thing worked, it’s still not worth it.”
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