The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and the State Administration of Markets and Markets announced on the 1st the “Notice on Further Protecting Minors from E-cigarettes.” The Circular requires all market entities not to sell electronic cigarettes to minors; urge electronic cigarette production and sales companies or individuals to close e-cigarette Internet sales websites or clients in time, and e-commerce platforms will promptly close e-cigarette stores and e-cigarette products Timely removal, e-cigarette production and sales companies or individuals withdraw e-cigarette advertisements posted via the Internet.
At the same time, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, the State Administration of Markets and other departments will further strengthen the supervision of electronic cigarettes. The tobacco monopoly administrative departments at all levels will increase the market supervision of e-cigarette products, strengthen the monitoring, dissuasion and suppression of the promotion and sale of e-cigarettes through the Internet, and investigate and deal with all kinds of illegal activities found; require any organization and Individuals discourage and stop the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors.
According to reports, many e-cigarette companies use young people as the focus of Internet marketing, and mislead consumers with propaganda that violates objective facts such as “helping to quit smoking” and “healthy and harmless”. But in fact, most e-cigarettes are highly random in terms of raw material selection, additive use, process design, quality control, etc., and there are serious quality and safety hazards such as unsafe ingredient addition, smoke oil leakage, and inferior batteries. In particular, in order to improve the attractiveness of products, some e-cigarette companies add various additives to change the taste of e-cigarettes and the color of e-cigarettes. The market is chaotic and the quality of products is uneven.
Up to now, a large number of countries around the world have completely banned or strictly restricted the sales of electronic cigarettes. There are more than 40 countries or regions that have explicit legislation or formally announced that they are prohibited from selling e-cigarettes, such as Brazil, Singapore, and India. In addition, more than 60 countries and regions, including the United States, the world’s largest consumer of electronic cigarettes, and the European Union, have strictly controlled e-cigarettes as tobacco products.
In August last year, the State Administration of Markets and the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau jointly issued the “Notice on Prohibiting the Sale of Electronic Cigarettes to Minors”, requesting that the sale of electronic cigarettes to minors be prohibited. However, there are still many e-cigarette companies that are blindly pursuing economic interests. The focus of Internet marketing is on the customer base of young people, and e-cigarettes are listed as representatives of “young”, “fashion” and “trend”. Promote and sell e-cigarettes. Most of the minors know, purchase and start smoking electronic cigarettes through the Internet, which poses serious harm to their physical and mental health.