Tobacco Asia

Volume 19, Number 4

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42 tobaccoasia / Issue 4, 2015 (September/October) Absence of Effective Regulation So far, China has not issued standards and proce- dural rules governing electronic cigarette produc- tion and safety. It is difficult to define the attributes of such products as they belong to neither tobacco products nor drugs. Therefore, there is actually an absence of effective regulation in China. In an address delivered at the 16th World Con- ference on Tobacco or Health held in Abu Dhabi, in March 2015, Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the National Health and Family Planning Commis- sion, said: "Electronic cigarettes are a 'double- edged sword', which is conducive to reducing reli- ance on nicotine during the period of giving up cigarette smoking, but which may also result in abuse of nicotine. To strengthen regulation over production and marketing of electronic cigarettes is an international trend, while there are almost no regulations and controls over electronic ciga- rettes in China, with an absence of relevant laws and regulations for supervision and control in this field, which deserves vigilance and which calls for imperative action." In an interview with news media conducted in July 2015, Dr. Gan Quan, director of China office of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, said, "As far as the scope of regulation over electronic cigarettes is concerned, e-cigarettes are just in a regulatory blind spot, as they are neither tobacco products nor drugs. This is not only a very serious problem, but is also a cause for disparity of quality and flooding of elec- tronic cigarettes in markets." Experts with the medical and health care com- munity suggest that there is an ideal role that e- cigarettes can play: along with gradual strengthen- ing of tobacco control, more and more cigarette smokers may be willing to give up tobacco. Under such circumstances, doctors at smoking cessation clinics can advise on the best way for them to kick the habit. If they are seriously reliant on nicotine, the doctors can then recommend the use of e-cig- arettes at a proper dosage to control and reduce intake of nicotine, and thus to attain the goal of eventually giving up smoking. The World Health Organization (WHO) once proposed that electronic cigarettes be regulated as drugs or tobacco products. So far, Canada, France, Australia, and other countries have already brought electronic cigarettes under regulation as tobacco products. In China, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) – the regulator of the national tobacco industry – has been look- ing at the status of electronic cigarettes for quite a long time, conducting surveys of markets of new tobacco products including electronic cigarettes, and launching relevant technical research. Speaking at the 2014 national tobacco work conference held in Beijing, STMA director-general little competition. By the end of May 2015, there were 6,881 retailers on the Taobao e-commerce website and 211 on T-Mall, and the majority of the products on sale are home-manufactured, brand name products with very little competition from foreign brands. The search index for elec- tronic cigarettes on the websites is on an upward trend, with the daily average of searches registered in May 2015 reaching a high of 86,000. Despite rapid development domestically, product or brand recognition by consumers is still very low. According to the results of an online survey conducted in December 2014 by Tobacco- China Online with a questionnaire about Chinese consumers' knowledge of new types of tobacco products, 93.27% of the respondents replied that they had heard of electronic cigarettes, while only 3.99% of the respondents said that they had used or were using electronic cigarettes. Obviously, the rate of use of e-cigarette products among Chinese smokers is still very low, which means that there might be a vast market potential for such products in the country. As a result of continued evolution, e-products today are no longer what they appeared to be a decade ago when they were invented. Presently, e-cigarettes are more diverse and highly techno- logically developed, with endless emergence of imitation cigarettes, mechanical cigarettes, vapor cigarettes with adjustable pressure and tempera- ture, etc, which are not only different in appear- ance, but also generate different flavors and tastes for consumers. As a result, Chinese consumers acquired new knowledge of electronic cigarettes. At the same time, domestic markets are becom- ing more and more open to the outside world, and market demand is gradually shifting from medi- um- and low-grade products manufactured locally to higher-grade products from around the world. An E-cigarette Show in China

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