THE country is planning to establish legislation to supervise electronic cigarettes as part of overall tobacco control efforts as use of the products increases among the youth, the National Health Commission said Monday.

“To reduce tobacco prevalence, we must prevent adolescents from trying tobacco. But e-cigarettes can easily lure youngsters and turn them into users of traditional tobacco later,” Mao Qun’an, chief of the commission’s planning department, said at a news conference.

“It is necessary to intensify supervision over e-cigarettes. The National Health Commission is working with other related departments conducting research on e-cigarette supervision and planning to put it under supervision through legislative means.”

Like conventional cigarettes, e-cigarettes can also be harmful. The flavored vapor they produce contains many toxic substances, and smokers could get addicted to the nicotine, Mao said.

“The use of e-cigarettes has become a popular trend in China and many other countries as well,” he said. “Although the number of e-cigarette smokers in China is still low, surveys show an increasing number of people, mostly young people, are using them.”

About 0.9 percent of people in China were e-cigarette users last year, compared with 0.5 percent in 2015, according to a survey released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in May, which was based on nearly 20,000 people across China. The number of e-cigarette users in China who are 15 years or older is estimated at 10 million, the center said.

In comparison, of all people 15 years or above in China, 26.6 percent last year were smokers of conventional tobacco, a decline from 27.7 percent in 2015, the report said.

Although law and regulations are generally lacking regarding the supervision of e-cigarettes in China, progress has been made in the past few years, with a few cities adopting legislation.

(China Daily)