At the end of March, China said that it would soon regulate vaping products like cigarettes. That means nicotine vapes would fall under the control of the country’s tobacco monopoly—a development with huge implications in China and potentially the rest of the world.
The nation produces roughly 90 percent of the planet’s e-cigarettes.
In China, the government and Big Tobacco are one and the same. The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and China National Tobacco Corporation—run by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and colloquially known as “China Tobacco”—is both the agency in charge of tobacco regulation and the manufacturer of tobacco products. Aside from a small number of “premium” foreign brands, China Tobacco holds virtually the entire market—for tobacco, but not, as yet, for vapes.
“This happens in low-to-middle income countries in general,” Samrat Chowdhery, the president of INNCO, a global nonprofit that supports the rights and well-being of adults who use safer nicotine, told Filter. “The issue is seen from the moral perspective but tempered with the trade value of tobacco. Being cash-strapped countries, that revenue is important. You can use that money to build schools for kids, the logic goes. What’s wrong with that?”
Alex Norcia – FilterMag – 2021-06-02
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