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 reporter's investigation found that there are merchants selling e-cigarettes on major e-commerce and social platforms, and the way is hidden, using a variety of edge ball words or video pictures to evade 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 stores of electronic cigarettes and found that although the management of offline stores for minors to purchase electronic cigarettes is relatively strict, it is still possible to easily purchase electronic cigarettes without verifying identity by adding online friends and other ways.
Online trading "repeatedly prohibited"
Major platforms can be easily purchased
"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 reporter's findings, 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 "smoking cessation condoms", "dzy", "electronic atomization", etc., there will be a large number of stores selling e-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.
Many social platforms have also found traces of online sales of e-cigarettes, many of which appear in the comment area, and sellers will publish implied information such as "squatting" and "click here" to evade keywords and guide buyers to personal homepages.
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 "adding friends", and the reporter's investigation found that on some platforms, "plus friends" 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 friend to trade.
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"
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 reporters 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.
Offline stores guide "online transactions"
No ID is required for purchase
The 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 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, they can first add network friends, and if necessary, they can be delivered directly, as to whether they need to review identity information, the shopkeeper said that they do not need it.
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 practitioner admitted to reporters that for every company, dealer, and even store, compliance management is always a headache and cannot 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 reporters that a large number of marketing means 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.
E-cigarettes have not been removed
Is the platform liable?
Ji Ligang, a professor at Fudan University Law School and a lawyer at Shanghai Siwei Lema Law Firm, told reporters that it should bear corresponding legal responsibilities for sales platforms that fail to monitor, discourage 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.
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: Weibo @ The Paper
Source: Central Committee of the Communist Youth League