I will say, though, disposable vapes with microcontrollers inside (and even full games and screens from recent reporting) are an egregious source of e-waste. Many layers of stupid are present here.
It's the exact opposite. Tobacco is so heavily regulated and taxed that these become profitable. If cigarettes were 3-4$ a pack (which they would be without sin taxes and regulatory overhead), the vape market would come down as well and there's no way these could be profitable. As it is, they retail around $20 and contain the same nicotine as multiple $10 packs of cigarettes.
There are many possible ways to slice the economical cake.
1) They don't sell for $3-4 a pack, yet your post seems to imply that the system has failed for cigarettes.
2) For externalities beyond the input cost of a product, the default [natural] condition is for those costs not to be included - one needn't enforce anything. Rather, it requires that someone with power put their thumb on the scale to enforce the inclusion of those costs during a sale[1].
> If cigarettes were 3-4$ a pack (which they would be without sin taxes and regulatory overhead),
Trying to show that 3-4$ a pack is not a more "natural" price for cigarettes than the current one, that it is a matter of perspective, and that if one wanted to construct such a natural price all externalities would have to be taken into account.