Tobacco Asia

12 tobaccoasia Issue 2, 2026 March / April Q&A THE TA Q A By Thomas Schmid On January 9, 2026, the STMA – China's State Tobacco Monopoly Administration – is- sued the country's first formal regulation governing literally any product containing nicotine: nicotine pouches, snus, chewing tobacco, nicotine inhalers, sprays, gums, lozenges, patches, capsules, pills e-liquids, and more. The framework came into immedi- ate effect, without any transition or grace period granted. Based in Beijing, Dr. Allen Liao, long-time Tobacco Asia correspondent and managing director of local news portal TobaccoChinaOnline, closely followed the developments leading up to the new regulation. Tobacco Asia (TA): Allen, let's begin easy-peasy. Did the industry anticipate the STMA's move or did it hit stakeholders by surprise? Dr. Allen Liao (AL): I would say that for those closely watching policy Understanding China's New Nicotine Regulation Dr. Allen Liao, managing director, TobaccoChina Online. trends, it wasn't a surprise. The decisive signal actually came earlier, with the State Council last December 12 ordering a crackdown on illigal oral tobacco and nicotine activities. STMA's issuing of specific rules in January was merely an operational follow-through, as the direction and determination from the top down were already crystal clear. However, while major [industry] players' compliance teams had been monitoring the signals closely and had started prepping, small- and medium-sized enterprises might have underestimated the speed and comprehensiveness of the enforcement, or they lacked the resources to track developments closely. So when the detailed actionable dropped, it hit them hard. TA: Things seem to go very differently in China than in western nations. There, a government authority would embark on extensive consultations with stakehold- ers to eventually derive a new regulation or even rewrite an existing one. But in China, the planning of that new nicotine regulation appears to have not involved any stakeholder consultations at all. Instead, that new framework came out in mid-January and was put into immediate effect. Why was there no transition period? AL: In my view, the decision to have no transition period comes down to three very practical reasons. Firstly and most importantly, it was about risk control. The market was getting a bit chaotic. You had all sorts of [nicotine] products, many with misleading marketing, and they were very appealing to young people. This was of huge concern [to the authorities]. If you gave a grace period, say a few months, what would have happened? Companies might have rushed selling off all their non-compliant stock – and that would have made the market even messier or much harder to regulate later on. The second reason, I think, was that STMA was confident in its enforcement power. The tobacco monopoly system in China is a very powerful nationwide machine, so they believe that once the rules are set, they have the ability to enforce it almost overnight. And companies that wanted to be compliant were already watching the policy closely anyway and could, thus, adapt quickly. The third reason is about keeping pace with the global trend. I searched online for some information about other countries. The rules for oral nicotine products are getting stricter every- where in the world. China doesn't want to become a regulatory loophole, a place where products that are restricted elsewhere can be dumped. TA: So in the end it's a matter of China streamlining its regulatory framework for oral nicotine with those frameworks that already may exist elsewhere in the world, right?

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