China may roll out e-cigarette rules amid global vaping backlash

China, the world’s largest tobacco market with over 300m smokers, may introduce rules for the country’s still relatively underdeveloped e-cigarette industry that would cover e-cigarette devices, packaging and the liquids that are used in them.
The news comes at a time when several countries (including Australia, Brazil and Japan) have banned or have limited aspects of the e-cigarette market, with India banning the sale, production and importing of e-cigarettes last week and South Korea advising citizens to avoid vaping following reports of a vaping-related illness in the US.

A series of negative news on vaping this week, including Massachusetts imposing a four-month ban on vaping product sales as mystery illness spreads, the U.S. CDC expecting hundreds more cases of this new vaping-related illness, and finally Juul hiring former tobacco exec as CEO and ceasing all US marketing after it got a formal letter from the FDA for illegally pitching its e-cigarettes as safer alternative to smoking.
It does seem somewhat surprising that there is now a sudden outbreak of these acute cases of illness given that vaping has been around for about a decade or so. However, as far as clinical studies go, a decade is not a long time and the longterm effects of vaping are therefore still not very well understood.
Needless to say the series of bad news on vaping is unlikely to end here given the number of new issues that have recently been reported in the media