No single person invented the vape pen. The device most people mean today, a slim battery with a cartridge of cannabis oil, borrowed its design from the nicotine e-cigarette, and the e-cigarette itself had a patent behind it that was filed decades before anyone sold one. The record names inventors for the earlier steps, but it does not name a first maker of the cannabis oil pen.
Here is how the pieces came together, from a 1960s patent to the cartridges on a dispensary shelf.
The 1960s patent nobody manufactured
In April 1963, Herbert A. Gilbert of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, filed a patent for a "smokeless non-tobacco cigarette." It was granted in August 1965 as US patent 3,200,819. The patent describes replacing "burning tobacco and paper with heated, moist, flavored air," using a heating element powered by a removable battery.
Gilbert's design never reached a store. Smithsonian magazine reports that he never found a company willing to mass-produce it. The idea of heating something to inhale it, instead of burning it, was on paper about forty years before it was on sale.
The tabletop vaporizer
The next well-known step was not a pen at all. The Volcano is a large tabletop vaporizer that fills a detachable balloon with vapor from dried flower. Storz & Bickel's own company history dates the start of Markus Storz's work on herbal hot air generators to 1996 and the first Volcanos on the market to 2000. Jürgen Bickel joined as a partner in 2002, when the company became Storz & Bickel.
The Volcano also became a research tool. Our guide to dry herb vaporizers covers a 2006 study that tested it, and how heating flower differs from burning it.
Hon Lik and the modern e-cigarette
The modern e-cigarette is usually credited to Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist. A short history in the Journal of Lung, Pulmonary & Respiratory Research says he patented his device in China in 2003, that early versions were introduced in China in 2003 or 2004, and that e-cigarettes reached the United States and Europe in 2007. Sources differ on the exact year of the first launch, which is why the range is given here.
His device set the basic layout that cannabis pens still use: a battery, a heating element, and a liquid that turns to vapor.
When cannabis moved into the pen
Nobody is on record as the first person to put cannabis oil in a pen. What the record does show is how fast it caught on. In April 2014, NPR reported that while e-cigarettes were "grabbing the headlines, the vape pen industry has been quietly ballooning."
The same report explained that pot vape pens "use the same mechanism" as e-cigarettes, but are built to vaporize concentrated cannabis oil rather than nicotine. Most did not hold flower at all. One maker interviewed for the piece had been selling vape pens out of the trunk of his car two years earlier.
Most cannabis cartridges today screw onto a battery with a 510 thread. Our vape battery guide explains what that fitting is and why nearly any battery fits nearly any cartridge.
2019 and the vitamin E acetate outbreak
In 2019, a wave of severe lung injuries was linked to vaping, and became known as EVALI. By February 2020, the CDC had counted 2,807 hospitalized cases or deaths, including 68 confirmed deaths. The CDC concluded that vitamin E acetate is "strongly linked" to the outbreak, and that THC products, "particularly from informal sources like friends, family, or in-person or online dealers," were linked to most cases. It also said the evidence was not sufficient to rule out other chemicals.
A Minnesota investigation found vitamin E acetate in all 20 THC cartridges tested from those seized in September 2019, and in none of the 10 products seized in 2018. Its authors cautioned that the number of products tested was small and that more research was needed to establish a causal link. Our vape cartridge guide covers what the outbreak means for buying, and our guide to checking a California dispensary's license shows how to confirm a store is licensed.
Vape pens today
The pen has split into two formats. A cartridge screws onto a separate battery, while an all-in-one has the battery and the oil built into one device. Our comparison of all-in-one vapes and cartridges covers the trade-offs. For flower rather than oil, the closer relative is a dry herb vaporizer, which heats flower the way the Volcano does.
If you want to see what is available, each store's menu shows its current vapes: Fresno, Orcutt, La Mesa and Chicago.
The vape pen is the newest of the familiar devices. Our history of who invented the bong traces a much older one back through its records.
Sources and further reading
- Herbert A. Gilbert, Smokeless non-tobacco cigarette, US patent 3,200,819, 1965
- Smithsonian magazine, Plans for the First E-cigarette Went Up in Smoke 50 Years Ago
- Storz & Bickel, company history on its About us page
- VJ Sleight, A brief history of the electronic cigarette, Journal of Lung, Pulmonary & Respiratory Research, 2016
- NPR, Pot Smoke And Mirrors: Vaporizer Pens Hide Marijuana Use, April 18, 2014
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Outbreak of Lung Injury Associated with the Use of E-Cigarette, or Vaping, Products
- Taylor J, Wiens T, Peterson J, et al., Characteristics of E-cigarette, or Vaping, Products Used by Patients with Associated Lung Injury and Products Seized by Law Enforcement — Minnesota, 2018 and 2019, MMWR, 2019
This article is general information for adults 21 and older and is not medical or legal advice. Current as of November 2026.
