[2FIRSTS] Experts Interpretion on the "Regulations on Warning Signs of Electronic Cigarettes"

1. Where is the Warning Sign?
 
In Article 1 "These provisions are applicable to electronic cigarettes and their sales packages sold within the territory of the People's Republic of China" and Article 2 "Electronic cigarettes and their sales packages should be marked with warnings" both have the word "and". That is to say, not only the "sales package" should be marked with warnings, but also the "electronic cigarette" itself should be marked with warnings.

What is an electronic cigarette? According to Article 3 of the Measures for the Administration of Electronic Cigarettes: The electronic cigarettes mentioned in these Measures include cigarette cartridges, smoking utensils and products sold in combination with cigarette cartridges and smoking utensils.
 
When selling a single cartridge, a warning should be marked on the cartridge, and also on the sales package of the e-cigarette cartridge.
 
When selling e-cigarette utensils, warning signs should be marked on the item, as well as on the sales package of item.
 
When selling the combination products of cartridges and smoking utensils, warning signs should be marked on the combination products, and warning signs should also be marked on the sales packages of the combination products.
 
Cartridges and smoking utensils should be marked with warnings, which are consistent with 7.1.2 b), 7.1.2 c) and 7.1.1 e) of the National Standard of Electronic Cigarette.

II. The content of warnings

Since October 2016, the contents of cigarette warnings sold in China are the following three groups.
 
Group 1: (The top should be marked with "Tips from our company") Smoking is harmful to health. Please do not smoke in no-smoking areas.
 
Group 2: Quitting smoking as soon as possible is beneficial to health. Quitting smoking can reduce the harm to health.
 
Group 3: Discourage teenagers from smoking and prohibit primary and secondary school students from smoking.
 
In this e-cigarette warning, only five of the six cigarette warning from cigarettes were directly replaced by "e-cigarettes". So the two contents are basically the same.
 
The only word "cigarette" that has not been replaced with "electronic cigarette" is "no smoking place". It can be seen that no-smoking places ban cigarettes together with e-cigarettes, and there is no specific "no-e-cigarette places".

 
Third, the specific location of warnings
 
According to Article 4, the first group of alarms shall be used fixedly on the front (main visible surface) and the second and third groups shall be on the back. If there is only one main visible surface, the first group of warning shall be fixed in place, and the second group and the third group shall be rotated within the same plane. 
 
The expression "main visible surface" is quite rigorous, avoiding the presence of warning words on the front, but displaying the side during terminal display (see the attached figure, the front and back sides of this cigarette in the Korean market are printed with warning pictures as required, but the terminal shows beautiful patterns of 10 boxes that are assembled together).

 
According to this, which side the consumer sees, where can they see it; The side merchants show to consumers are the faces that is the main meeting.

"There is only one main visible thing" should refer to special situations such as the spherical surface of a sphere and the side of a cylinder.

 
IV. The "regulations" is higher than the "national standard"
 
According to Article 7, the marking method should be direct printing (system) and non-pasting, and it should have a certain durability to ensure that it is legible under normal use conditions.
 
However, the requirement of 7.1.3 of the national standard of E-cigarette is "if the product mark (note: including warning) cannot be marked on the product due to the limitation of volume, shape, surface material or function, it shall be marked on the sales package." 
 
It can be seen that the Regulation is higher than the National Standard. There is no exception of "warning cannot be marked" in the Regulations. Regardless of the volume, shape, material and function of e-cigarettes and their sales packages, they should be printed (made) directly and clearly legible under normal use.
 
V. Font size of warning area
 
According to Article 7, if the area of the police area is ≥48.0cm2, the height of text font in the police area shall be ≥4.5mm, and the proportion of text to the police area shall be ≥13.3%; If the area is less than 48.0cm2, the height of text font in the police area shall be ≥2.0mm, and the proportion of text to the police area shall be ≥28.9% and 48.0cm2. In fact, it is the front (or back) area of 20 ordinary hard boxes packaged in 84mm standard circular cigarettes. 
 
Therefore, the "main meeting" of e-cigarette or e-cigarette sales package is larger than the front of cigarette box, and the font size should start from 4.5mm; Smaller than the front of the cigarette box, the font size is 2mm.
 
After calculation, there are the following two points:
 
1. "Our company reminds you that smoking electronic cigarettes is harmful to your health. Please don't smoke electronic cigarettes in no-smoking places." There are 24 words in total. Each word is 4.5mm×4.5mm, with a total area of 4.86cm2, accounting for 10.1% of 48cm2, but less than 13.3%. Therefore, the actual printed font height may be larger, or the word spacing needs to be considered in the algorithm of word area.

2. It's also "Our company reminds you that smoking electronic cigarettes is harmful to your health. Please don't smoke electronic cigarettes in no-smoking places". Each word is 2.0mm×2.0mm, with a total area of 0.96cm2 Therefore, 0.96cm2 is the design lower limit of "cartridge can be seen mainly".

 
If you want to make it smaller, you won't be able to hold the warning (at present, the surface area of the cylinder of the conventional solid-state electronic cigarette bomb is close to 10cm2, and the main visible surface of the atomized cigarette bomb is about 8cm2, which is enough to print the warning according to the regulations).

 
VI. It is forbidden to use misleading and inducing language.
 
According to Article 9, it is forbidden to use such functional terms as "health care, curative effect, safety, environmental protection, low harm, harm reduction, smoking cessation, substitution, high quality, performance improvement, addiction and no harm to health" and "light taste, super light taste, softness, low tar, no tar and low nicotine" in electronic cigarettes and their sales packages, inner packages, signs and product manuals.
 
Some of the words banned are for standard cigarettes. According to the tobacco industry standard YC/T 200-2006 "Rules for the Compilation of Cigarette Names" 4.3.6, functional terms such as "health care, curative effect, safety, environmental protection and low harm", quality terms such as "light taste, super light taste and softness", and "medium and low tar, low tar content, best, best, gold medal, etc."
 
Prohibited words for electronic cigarettes outside the scope of prohibited words for cigarettes can be divided into the following three types:
 
1. According to the logic of banning cigarettes, it can be inferred that electronic cigarettes should be banned. For example, "tar-free", although e-cigarettes do not have tar (tar needs to be burned to produce it), they are equally harmful, and the audience of the word "tar-free" may interpret it as "no harm" leading to uncontrolled use, so it should be banned.
 
2. Under the new track, individuals feel that there is a dispute. For example, "high quality" and "improved performance", as a traditional cigarette, it is really difficult to quantitatively prove its quality and performance; However, electronic cigarettes (especially smoking utensils) are electronic products, and the battery life and the function of the chip can be accurately detected and compared in terms of quality and performance. Even lighters can be upgraded, and the instructions of smoking utensils cannot express "high quality" and "performance improvement", which seems controversial.
 
3, unable to accurately judge. It refers to "flavoring terms that are easy to induce minors to take". Such terms should be banned, but examples such as "health care, curative effect" should be enumerated like "efficacy terms". Otherwise, there will be a huge deviation in the scale of each person's understanding only by "inducing" and "flavoring". For example, a cigarette bomb wrote in the manual that "this product strictly abides by Article 26 of the Measures for the Administration of Electronic Cigarettes, and its taste is tobacco", but it jumped out.
 
When a minor says, "I yearn for the taste of tobacco", is it induced? For example, a cigarette bomb is marked with a list of atomized substances according to the national standard 7.1.1 a) of Electronic Cigarette, and contains 4% lemon oil (additive No.92 in Appendix A, the maximum allowable usage is 5%). However, when a minor says, "I'm looking forward to the taste of lemon oil", does it count as seasoning? For example, cigarettes and e-cigarettes both use fruits as brand names directly, which is even more unclear ...
 
Under the ban of misleading and induced language, e-cigarettes need to start from scratch. From flying freely to dancing in chains, "referring to cigarettes" may be a safer option.