At Your Own Risk, Chinese e-Cigarettes

"Once the national standard comes out, I can follow its targets and make big investments."
"I won't have to worry that something will happen, but now I don't know which day the sword would fall."
Ou Junbian, owner, Sigelei, e-cigarette exporter

"We can guarantee that they [cannabis e-cigarettes] are safe to be consumed through the stomachs, but is it safe enough to be absorbed through the lungs?"
"To be honest, in this respect, neither we nor the industry has evidence that is particularly solid."
Jiang Xingtao, director of flavors, RELX, e-cigarette seller

Reuters

China, in response to a vaping boom among young Chinese, is preparing to mandate compliance by producers of e-cigarettes to standardizing ingredients and manufacturing. With the establishment of a "national standard", producing companies are expected by law to provide details on the number and dosage of ingredients, to place warnings on packages and to devise methods of testing e-cigarettes, ensuring compliance.

Up to the present, the government of China has permitted the industry free rein, enabling them to thrive, no supervision by any government agency to ensure quality and safety. The vast country has over 9,500 e-cigarette production companies many with haphazard quality controls, resulting in knockoffs, unsafe ingredients and leakage of vape liquid. Vaping oils with nicotine levels higher than the package states were produced by eight of those companies.

Obedience to the new guidelines will have the effect of production costs increasing, a circumstance likely to result in hundreds of small e-cigarette exporters going out of business. The new standards when brought into law will have an opposite effect for most manufacturers since clear guidelines will ensure that manufacturing companies who comply may then legally sell their product in the vast Chinese market.

This is an industry that has viewed China as a haven, where ninety percent of the world's e=cigarettes are made. High-profile venture capital funding has invested hundreds of millions in some of the nation's top e-cigarette brands such as RELX, FLOW and Yooz. Chinese e-cigarette exporters have seen their sales drop precipitously to the United States in the wake of vaping-related health crises where thousands of American users have become seriously ill, and 47 have died.

Coincidentally, the domestic market which began to open up three years earlier appears to have taken up the slack, with an increasing interest in vaping in China. An estimated ten million Chinese e-users has turned Beijing's attention to the popular pastime, mostly young people among whom it is appealing to vape sleek devices with flavours such as chilled strawberry and orange soda.

China's e=cigarette market alone was valued at $750.4 million in 2018, according to global market research consultancy, Euromonitor, almost triple the 2014 valuation. Of a population of close to 1.4 billion people, there are over 300 million smokers. Vaping among the young has raised public concern, urging that regulations be drawn up and put into law and into practise to ensure public health safety in vaping.

It was revealed in early November on the website of People's Daily, the Communist Party's official news organ, that most e-cigarette companies went on selling their products online in defiance of the ban. China Central Television, the state broadcaster, filmed Beijing authorities calling on e-cigarette companies to comply with the ban and a day later Alibaba's Taobao and JD.com., two of the nation's most popular e-commerce platforms, no longer listed their availability.