China ponders electronic cigarette regulation

The Chinese government is considering regulating the manufacture, sale and consumption of electronic cigarettes ‘in the light of uncertainty regarding the health risk/benefit of the devices’, according to a China Daily story relayed by the TMA.

Mao Qun’an, a spokesman for China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, made known the government’s thinking while speaking on the sidelines of the recently-concluded 16th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Mao said electronic cigarettes were widely available in China, on the streets or at online stores, and in a variety of flavors that could attract the young.

Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, was quoted by the Daily as saying electronic cigarettes would attract young people to smoking.

She recommended that national governments “abandon or at least regulate them”. And Douglas Bettcher, director of the WHO’s Non-communicable Diseases Prevention Department, agreed.

Countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Brazil had banned e-cigarettes, while others had regulated them as tobacco products or as medicinal products. “But the bottom line is to regulate them,” he said.

The Chinese government’s tobacco monopoly is, by a long way, the biggest manufacturer of traditional tobacco cigarettes.