JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Public interest in e-cigarettes in India has evolved in complex ways, particularly around the 2019 national prohibition on electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS). To understand how attention to these products has shifted over the last decade, we analysed Google Trends data on searches for the term “e-cigarette” from 2014 to 2024 and examined both temporal changes and emerging spatial patterns across states. Using interrupted time-series modelling with ARIMA, the analysis showed that the ban was followed by an immediate and statistically significant reduction in search volumes, with a continued downward slope over the subsequent years. Yet this national decline masked important regional variations. While the pre-ban period was characterised by higher search intensity in technologically connected southern metropolitan states, the post-ban maps revealed a clear shift, with northeastern states such as Nagaland and Mizoram emerging as new hotspots of interest. Spatial clustering also became more pronounced in the post-ban period, with Moran’s I indicating modest but significant autocorrelation, suggesting that the rise in northeastern search activity was not random. Although online search data cannot directly explain the mechanisms driving this shift, the pattern aligns with global observations that regions with weaker enforcement, porous borders, and distinct cultural practices often witness greater challenges from illicit or unregulated e-cigarette markets. The findings therefore point to the need for region-specific responses: strengthening surveillance and enforcement in northeastern states, designing targeted communication strategies for urban southern regions where initial interest was highest, and continuously monitoring public interest as a proxy for evolving illicit demand. Together, these insights contribute to a more nuanced understanding of India’s post-ban landscape and highlight that national policy effects can diverge substantially across geographic and sociocultural contexts.