Online transactions are secretly active, and e-cigarettes bring new issues to the protection of minors

Short comments

Media investigations found that although the "online ban on e-cigarettes" has been issued and implemented as early as 2019, major e-commerce platforms and social platforms are still the "hardest hit areas" for illegal e-cigarette transactions.

According to media reports, merchants through the e-commerce or social platform drainage, consumers will receive a call immediately after placing an order, after confirming the identity, the merchant requires not to dialogue in the chat window of the e-commerce platform, but to add WeChat communication, and then complete the follow-up transaction. Because it is such a secret transaction channel, even if the consumer is a minor, the transaction can be completed.

Whether it is e-commerce or social platforms, merchants only use the platform to drain traffic, and the final transaction method is still carried out through "plus WeChat". This means that the loss caused by the account blocking will not be too large, and the merchant can open a new account, and even after the platform supervision is perfected, it can also update the skills to avoid supervision. This undoubtedly presents a new test, and there is a clear need for the regulatory level to respond to this.

Banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors has become a social consensus. On October 30, 2019, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the Notice on Further Protecting Minors from E-cigarettes, which clearly stated that e-cigarettes must not be sold to minors, to prevent minors from purchasing and smoking e-cigarettes through the Internet, and e-cigarette stores and sales websites should be closed in a timely manner. The "Administrative Measures for Electronic Cigarettes (Draft for Comments)" released in December 2021 also clarifies that general primary and secondary schools, special education schools, secondary vocational schools, specialized schools, and kindergartens must not set up e-cigarette product sales outlets. The sale of e-cigarette products to minors is prohibited. However, judging from the chaos exposed by the media in recent years, unlike the repeated prohibition of traditional tobacco, minors always seem to have corresponding channels to obtain e-cigarettes.

The current exposure of the e-cigarette regulatory loopholes, of course, and the e-cigarette itself continues to receive social attention, which is a good phenomenon, the treatment of such a new thing, the attention of the outside world to help promote the supervision to improve, from the understanding of e-cigarettes to the gradual landing of supervision, all reflect such changes. As far as the problem of this exposure is concerned, the platform of course has an unshirkable responsibility, especially the supervision level of social platforms needs to be paid enough attention. In fact, not only the sale of e-cigarettes, many contraband have room for survival on social platforms, perhaps because the scale is not large, so the platform will not be too strict in content management, and there is no incentive to completely eliminate similar phenomena.

The media's exposure of the above chaos now certainly helps the platform to fulfill its corresponding responsibilities, but objectively speaking, the problem is not so simple.

The protection of minors involved in e-cigarettes is not only caused by e-cigarettes, the protection of minors has never been simple, and it is easy to block an exit and other loopholes will appear. Even if there is no e-commerce and social platform, it may not be difficult to open up new channels, and it is easy to obtain corresponding resources between small groups and acquaintances. When we talk about the protection of minors, many times can not simply attribute the responsibility to a certain party, social platforms selling e-cigarettes of course have the problem of the platform, but in the face of children who fall in love with e-cigarettes, parents also need to reflect - when the child came into contact with e-cigarettes, and how to be obsessed with e-cigarettes, only by answering such questions and seriously examining the shortcomings of being a guardian, it is possible to improve the protection of children from the root.

In today's developed information exchange, it is foreseeable that there will be such and such regulatory loopholes around e-cigarettes in the future, parents do not have to be too anxious about this, first of all, we must create a small environment for family education, and hope to avoid some unfavorable factors that affect the healthy growth of children. There is no perfect way to protect minors once and for all, and all parties concerned need to do their part to achieve good results.