Nationwide public smoking ban possible
- By Sally L.satel and Sarahann Yeh
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E-mail China Daily, May 20, 2015
But there is an alternative that could help appease angry citizens and mitigate the revenue loss from an outright ban on smoking: electronic cigarettes. Given that e-cigarettes merely heat a nicotine solution to produce an inhalable vapor, they release none of the carcinogenic tar of cigarette smoke, making them the ideal nicotine-delivery system for smokers seeking - or being forced - to reduce or halt their tobacco intake.
Aside from being far less damaging than cigarettes, e-cigarettes are a homegrown product, invented in China in 2003. But despite considerable progress in China's e-cigarette industry - in 2013, Shenzhen in Guandong province housed 900 manufacturers of the devices, up 200 percent from 2012, and accounted for more than 95 percent of global e-cigarette production - traditional cigarettes still dominate the Chinese market.
As Yanzhong Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations recently said: "If only 1 percent of China's smoking population turned to e-cigarettes, it would mean a market of about 3.5 million e-cigarette users." And the CNTC could become the world's largest e-cigarette maker.
One reason China has not managed to tap the e-cigarette industry's enormous potential is a lack of adequate regulation. Low entry barriers enable intense competition that diminishes producers' profit margins, and shoddy products are rife, owing to low manufacturing standards. If e-cigarettes are to replace traditional cigarettes and offset lost tobacco revenues, the government must regulate the industry more carefully to ensure safety and quality.
Already, it seems CNTC directors have complied with a government-mandated ban on cigarette smoking. Whether they have become e-cigarette "vapors" is not known.
A smoke-free China - one that benefits from rising productivity and massive healthcare savings - may seem like a pipedream. But a nationwide ban on smoking, with a reliable e-cigarette industry providing an alternative (both to smokers and to budgets), offers an intriguing way to turn the dream into reality.
Sally L. Satel, a medical doctor, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and Sarahann Yeh is a student at the University of Maryland.
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