Under the "heavy blow" of the regulatory authorities, the phenomenon of online trading of electronic cigarettes and guiding minors to buy electronic cigarettes has not been broken.
On January 18, the surging news released an exclusive report, the reporter's investigation found that major e-commerce, social product platforms have merchants selling e-cigarettes, and the way is hidden, using a variety of edge ball words or video pictures to avoid censorship.
On February 22, the Ministry of Public Security, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the Ministry of Education jointly issued the "Special Work Plan for Cleaning Up and Rectifying the Sale of Electronic Cigarettes to Minors and Severely Cracking Down on E-cigarette-related Violations and Crimes" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), and deployed special clean-up and rectification work from now until the end of April.
On March 11, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration issued the "Administrative Measures for Electronic Cigarettes" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures"), emphasizing the need to strengthen the publicity and education of the health hazards of smoking electronic cigarettes, discouraging young people from smoking electronic cigarettes, and prohibiting primary and secondary school students from smoking electronic cigarettes.
So, after the introduction of the new policy, has the online transaction of relevant e-commerce and social platforms improved?
According to the reporter's follow-up investigation, the situation is still not objective: the situation of the flood of online transactions of e-cigarettes has not changed significantly, the platform drainage and purchase have no threshold for minors, and even the formation of an organized team to encourage sales to student groups.
At the same time, the reporter visited the offline store of the e-cigarette and found that although the offline store has a relatively strict management of the purchase of e-cigarettes by minors, it is still possible to easily purchase e-cigarettes without verifying the identity by adding WeChat, circle of friends micro-businesses, etc.
Online trading is "repeatedly prohibited", and major mainstream platforms can easily buy
"Smoking cessation protective cover", "electronic cigarette charger", "electronic atomization"... The keyword "makeover" for e-cigarette sales has become a key means of online illegal transactions, which has not been improved after the introduction of the "Plan".
According to the surging news reporter, searching for "e-cigarettes" on the e-commerce platform will pop up the "Green Network Plan" prompt, showing that the law stipulates that tobacco monopoly products cannot be sold through the information network. But similar keywords will not be regulated, search for "Yueke 5 generations", "smoking cessation sets", "dzy", "electronic atomization", etc., there will be a large number of stores selling electronic cigarettes pop up.
Previously, on social platforms, when reporters searched for "e-cigarettes" in the chat box, they found that a large number of users with "e-cigarettes" as the ID openly sold e-cigarettes on their personal homepages. According to the search records, the reporter also joined 5-6 group chats named after e-cigarettes, and the group mainly exchanged specific information on e-cigarette online transactions.
Taking a social platform as an example, according to a reporter's investigation, after the introduction of the "Plan", the group chat with "e-cigarette" as the ID and "e-cigarette" as the name has been difficult to find, but if you search for keywords such as "atomization", "electronic vapor" and "protective cover", you can still find a large number of e-cigarette online transactions of group chats and sales merchants.
At the same time, in addition to soul, tiger punch, Douban, tantan, the reporter also found traces of online sales of e-cigarettes on the little red book and idle fish, many of which appeared in the comment area, and the seller would release hints such as "squatting" and "click here" to evade keywords and guide buyers to personal homepage.
It is worth noting that whether it is e-commerce or social platforms, a common feature is that the platform is the drainage party, and the final transaction method is still carried out through "plus WeChat", and the reporter's investigation found that on the idle fish platform, "plus WeChat" transactions are more common. The information left by the seller is "sales protection cover", and after the buyer inquires, he will take the initiative to ask for a WeChat transaction.
It is worth noting that when the reporter communicated with the above sellers to buy, no seller asked the age of the reporter, when the reporter revealed the identity of the student, and even a buyer said: the student identity is the best to sell, and enthusiastically to develop the reporter into an agent.
Online transactions present "team" and "scale", and develop agents layer by layer
The reporter's investigation found that today's e-cigarette transactions have shown a clear "scale", in a number of transaction group chats, there are sellers in the initiative to develop agents, and said that "moving fingers can make money."
A seller told the surging news reporter that now agents are mainly divided into two models, the first is to take the goods through the purchase price, and then sell them at a high price to customers; the second is to drain and expand the channels for the source sellers, and they do not take the goods themselves. There are also sellers who say that they have to charge a membership fee of 200 yuan to allow them to become agents. "The dues are not given to me, but to the people above." After paying the membership fee, you can get the purchase qualification, as for how much money you can earn, "all depends on your own ability."
The sales materials, pictures and videos required by the agent are provided by the superior. Another seller said that e-cigarette sales have a clear underground network, through the president, and then to the lower level, layer by layer, each layer will earn the difference in price, and finally to the consumer. However, there is no contact between the teams, only the incoming and outgoing parties have contact, and he does not know who the president is, but some public information will be circulated among the members.
The purchase price provided by different teams is also different. A seller showed the reporter a quotation for the purchase of e-cigarettes: taking the YOOZ Zero second-generation series as an example, the single-shot purchase price is 130 yuan, and the official price is 248 yuan-278 yuan; the Yueke five-generation series, the purchase price is 150 yuan per pole, and the official price is 268 yuan. The specific shipment price can be determined by yourself, but it generally exceeds 200 yuan.
Offline stores guide "WeChat transactions", and purchases do not require ID cards
The surging news reporter visited a number of e-cigarette stores and found that even if it is an offline transaction, minors can still "convert" to online and easily buy e-cigarettes.
On March 10, the reporter visited a number of Yueke e-cigarette offline stores located in Hongkou District, Shanghai, and purchased e-cigarettes on the spot, requiring real-name registration to scan the code and confirm the identity of adults before purchasing.
However, many shopkeepers have said that in the future, they do not need to buy on the spot, you can first add WeChat to see the circle of friends, and if necessary, you can directly "flash", as for whether flash delivery needs to review identity information, the shop owner said that it is not necessary.
When the reporter made it clear that he was a minor or purchased on behalf of a minor, many shopkeepers agreed. "Just pay."
An e-cigarette company practitioner admitted to the surging news reporter that every company, dealer, and even store, compliance management is always a headache and can not be avoided. Especially at a time when market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, profitability is the biggest reason why violations are repeatedly prohibited.
"As a new track of rapid rise in the field of FMCG, the electronic atomizer industry has repeatedly prohibited phenomena such as price chaos, channeling goods, selling counterfeits and selling to minors, and stricter compliance management has become a problem that the industry's leading enterprises must face."
The practitioner said that at present, e-cigarette companies have strengthened measures to prevent minors from purchasing, and now most of the e-cigarette products not only clearly warn minors to buy on the outer packaging, take effective age checks for customers who come to the store, and also place a "prohibit minors to buy" logo in a prominent position in the store, warning minors to buy, but still can't prevent "the road is one foot high, the magic is high", and the flood of online transactions is the source of the difficulty of young people to control tobacco.
"The harm of e-cigarettes to teenagers is obvious." Chen De, vice president of the Shanghai Tobacco Control Association, told the surging news reporter that a large number of marketing methods and various sweet, candy or fruit flavoring agents added to e-cigarettes have made e-cigarettes doubly attractive to teenagers to contact nicotine and become addicted. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance, the brain of adolescents will develop to 20 years old, and the use of nicotine can have long-term adverse consequences for the brain development of adolescents.
A global systematic survey showed that non-smoking adolescents under the age of 20 who use e-cigarettes are more than twice as likely to smoke in the future as adolescents who do not use either.
On March 11, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration announced that it had formed a national standard for "electronic cigarettes" (the second draft for comments) and solicited opinions from the public, and the opinion draft made clear provisions on atomization: the characteristic flavor of the product should not be made to show other flavors other than tobacco.
If e-cigarettes are not removed, does the platform need to be held responsible?
For the frequent illegal trade in e-cigarettes on major platforms, the surging news reporter also learned about the relevant countermeasures from the platform.
For the flood of electronic cigarettes "micro-business", the WeChat team replied to the surging news reporter that the use of WeChat for tobacco, electronic cigarettes and other sales behaviors violates relevant national laws and regulations, and clearly belongs to the violation of the norms of the WeChat platform, which has been verified according to the evidence submitted by users and carried out gradient processing. In addition, for all kinds of malicious violations, WeChat will also carry out various types of special clean-up work, and carry out centralized special rectification according to user reporting clues.
Since January 2022, after a special review of the reporting accounts submitted by users, 4753 relevant illegal accounts have been investigated and found; for this batch of illegal accounts, a ladder punishment has been carried out according to the degree of account violation, and according to the severity of the violation, the gradient of warning, blocking the circle of friends, and banning the number has been imposed respectively.
WeChat said that in the future, it will continue to strengthen the acceptance of reports of such behavior, continuously collect samples of various confrontational variants and obscure code words, and do a good job of user education and publicity guidance to keep users away from violations.
Douyin told the surging news reporter that the platform has strictly complied with the relevant national laws and regulations, and strictly prohibited the sale of electronic cigarettes and related products (including but not limited to product spare parts, atomization rods, inhaled energy rods, etc.) on the platform.
At the same time, the platform took the initiative to issue a reminder in a prominent position, "The online sale of electronic cigarettes is illegal and protects minors from electronic cigarettes." (Search for "e-cigarettes" can be seen); the platform strictly prohibits the practice of leading to sales on other platforms through comments. If found, its account and related content will be strictly handled.
Douyin said that the majority of users are welcome to participate in supervision, if violations are found, users can report or send details to the mailbox in the station: [email protected], the platform will follow up in a timely manner.
As of press time, other relevant platforms have not responded to this matter.
Ji Ligang, a professor at Fudan University Law School and a lawyer at Shanghai Siwei Lema Law Firm, told the surging news reporter that it should bear corresponding legal responsibilities for sales platforms that fail to monitor, dissuade and stop minors from purchasing e-cigarettes.
He believes that the Notice on Further Protecting Minors from E-cigarettes mentions that "urge" e-cigarette production and sales enterprises or individuals to promptly close e-cigarette Internet sales websites or clients; urge "e-commerce platforms" to close e-cigarette stores in a timely manner and remove e-cigarette products from the shelves in a timely manner; "urge" e-cigarette production and sales enterprises or individuals to withdraw e-cigarette advertisements released through the Internet. The notice does not clearly stipulate the responsibility of the platform, which is still a soft constraint in essence.
However, according to the relevant provisions of the Law on the Protection of Minors, which came into effect in 2021, the control of e-cigarettes has been increased again, and for the first time, the sale of cigarettes to minors has been explicitly prohibited in the law. Among them, article 59 of the Law on the Protection of Minors stipulates that it is forbidden to sell tobacco, alcohol, lottery tickets to minors or to redeem lottery prizes. Tobacco, alcohol, and lottery operators shall set up signs in a conspicuous position not to sell tobacco, alcohol, or lottery tickets to minors; where it is difficult to determine whether they are minors, they shall be required to present their identity documents.
Where relevant business operators violate the above provisions, the regulatory departments shall order corrections within a time limit, give warnings, and confiscate illegal gains, and may also impose a fine of not more than 50,000 yuan; if they refuse to make corrections or if the circumstances are serious, order them to stop business for rectification or revoke their business licenses or revoke relevant licenses, they may also impose a fine of between 50,000 and 500,000 yuan.
Source: The Paper