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November 01, 2021 by taipeitimes.com

Consumer protection advocates on Tuesday issued an urgent call to revise regulations for tobacco and other products after it found that e-cigarettes and date-rape drugs can be easily purchased on Shopee.

An investigation by the Consumer Protection Association in Taiwan found multiple vendors on the Singapore-based site selling colorful candies as a cover for e-cigarettes.

Through these vendors, it is possible to buy an e-cigarette cartridge for only NT$150, or a full set with a heating element for NT$800, the association said.

Sellers have been adapting their tactics as the government debates the best way to regulate novel cigarette products through the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法).

October 21, 2021 by scmp.com

Lawmakers passed a long-delayed bill on Thursday banning the import and sale of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products in Hong Kong, delivering a major victory for health activists and educators who have blamed the devices for encouraging smoking among young people.
While the new law targets the local business of vaping, people will still be free to use the gadgets, prompting some politicians to call for more aggressive measures to curb tobacco use, including banning smoking in all public places except for designated areas. [...]

September 02, 2021 by thestandard.com.hk

Hong Kong could see a complete ban on electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products soon, after the city’s largest party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, throws its support behind it. 

DAB lawmaker Wong Ting-kwong, chairman of the Bills Committee on Smoking, said the government has asked him to host a meeting Friday next week, which would see the government finalize its stance on whether or not to ban all these new tobacco products. 

August 05, 2021 by reuters.com

Shares in Chinese vaping firms slid on Thursday after state media reported many minors are able to purchase e-cigarettes in the country despite a ban on sales to under-18s and cited an expert as saying a tougher crackdown was needed. Xinhua news agency said its reporters made unannounced visits to e-cigarette shops in the northern cities of Tianjin and Shenyang and found that while all had signs stating sales to minors were prohibited, enforcement of the law varied in practice.

August 04, 2021 by thestandard.com.hk

Authorities should ban both heat-not-burn tobacco and e-cigarettes, as it is misleading to say the former is healthier than the latter, Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health said.

The council said government statistics showed that teenagers in Hong Kong smoke heated tobacco more frequently than adults.

Council chairman Henry Tong Sau-chai said society has a strong consensus on a total ban on alternative smoking products.

"However, it has been almost three years since the policy address first announced a ban on alternative smoking products," he said.

July 07, 2021 by taipeitimes.com

E-cigarette use in Taiwan has tripled since 2018, a study by the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday.

E-cigarette use grew from 0.6 percent in 2018 to 1.7 percent last year, said the study, which last year garnered responses from 25,000 people aged 18 or older.

The age groups with the highest rates of use were men aged 26 to 30 (6.3 percent) and women aged 21 to 25 (4.6 percent), the HPA said.

“To put this growth into perspective, use of traditional cigarettes grew only marginally over this period, from 13 percent in 2018 to 13.1 percent in 2020,” HPA Tobacco Control Division official Lu Meng-ying (呂孟穎) said.

June 02, 2021 by filtermag.org

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 [...] is both the agency in charge of tobacco regulation and the manufacturer of tobacco products. [...]

May 31, 2021 by globaltimes.cn

Experts' warning over e-cigarettes and their related health risks for those people looking for their first "puff" escalated as the 34th World No Tobacco Day fell on Monday.

China's National Health Commission devoted an entire chapter to e-cigarettes in its latest report on smoking for the first time and stressed in the opening that "there is ample evidence that e-cigarettes are unsafe and pose a health risk." According to the China Report on the Health Hazards of Smoking 2020, over 1 million people die of tobacco-related diseases in China every year. [...]

May 11, 2021 by reuters.com

China will become the world’s first country to regulate all synthetic cannabinoid substances, in a bid to get ahead of new variations whose chemical properties are not yet subject to regulation, the country’s drugs control office said on Tuesday.

Synthetic cannabinoids are lab-made drugs originally designed to produce similar effects to cannabis, but which are often far stronger and carry a greater health risk, Deng Ming, deputy director of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, said at a briefing.

April 30, 2021 by focustaiwan.tw

New Taipei, April 29 (CNA) Legislation banning the sale of e-cigarettes in New Taipei City cleared the city council Thursday, making it the first of Taiwan's six special municipalities to ban the sale of vaping products.

The New Taipei ordinance on the management of novel tobacco products prohibits the manufacture, importation, sale, display or advertising of vaping devices and heated tobacco products and components unless one has a government drug or medical device permit to do so.