Zhihu User Asks: How Should We View the Regulator's Vaping Ban Notice?

If you’re just a casual onlooker and not in the industry, you can stop reading now—you may not understand this.

Let me start with the conclusion: in the short term, this is very unfavorable for the vaping industry, mainly because of fluctuations in public opinion and market psychology. But in the long run, it is actually tremendously positive news. From a PR and external messaging perspective, treating bad news like good news may well be the best strategy.

Reasoning process:

(My reasoning involves a certain degree of information asymmetry. If any point feels untrue to you, just move on and read another answer—assume I’m talking nonsense.)

Fact ①: For well-known reasons, it is impossible for China to completely ban e-cigarettes.

Fact ②: From the standpoint of product fundamentals, traditional cigarettes have major inherent flaws, while e-cigarettes have fewer inherent flaws. No amount of argument will change that.

Fact ③: E-cigarettes significantly affect the interests of certain groups. There are even concerns in some quarters about a “technology explosion.” Combined with the lag in legal and interest-allocation systems, this has led to the current situation.

Fact ④: Previously, the hardest part of the vaping business was not making products, but promoting them and finding suitable consumption scenarios.

Fact ⑤: E-commerce used to be the best consumption scenario, but it could not solve the “promotion” problem. The existing customer base was limited, and it was impossible to spread to new users as aggressively as brands like OPPO and VIVO.

Fact ⑥: As a highly controversial product category, there are only two ways to solve this problem: indirect promotion and time.

Fact ⑦: As an addictive product, the only real promotion path can be learned from cigarettes: widespread offline display (such as tobacco shops) and word-of-mouth from consumers seeing others use them.

Fact ⑧: The difficulties with offline display for e-cigarettes mainly come down to two things: the issue of minors (the official, surface-level reason) and competition between online and offline distributors (the real underlying issue).

Inferences

Inference ①: After online sales channels are banned, the size of the core user base will not change (this is an addictive product). Offline sales data may decline in the short term because distributors will hesitate, but in the long term they will increase sharply because consumers will no longer be able to buy online.

Inference ②: At present, there are four common forms of offline distribution: specialty stores, convenience stores, vending machines, and other partner retail outlets. As demand shifts offline, the number of these four types of channels will grow rapidly.

Inference ③: Because of this policy, the goals of vaping companies have become more aligned than ever before—open offline stores. As a result, online marketing budgets, which were already being wasted, will now be redirected toward highly efficient offline subsidies and conversion.

Inference ④: As a product that depends heavily on user experience and repeat consumption, more offline locations ≈ more people trying the products. As long as the products are not officially banned, the number of customers will only keep growing.

Inference ⑤: The WeChat seller segment should not be ignored. In the future, owners of vaping stores will aggressively transition in that direction as well—but not in the usual pyramid-style inventory-pushing model. Rather, it will just mean taking payment through WeChat, shipping products, and maintaining contact with regular store customers.

In summary, I believe this notice will deal a heavy short-term blow to the vaping industry, especially to pure e-commerce brands and Taobao-style sellers such as Hualimen, Xiao Mage, and others. It will also become a barrier that significantly raises the threshold for starting a vaping business.

Rather than saying “online sales are no longer allowed,” it would be more accurate to say, “no more new people should enter this industry.”

But in the long run, it is a major positive. That’s because the overall quality of participants in the vaping industry has generally been low, and many have been following extremely low-conversion approaches. This move has effectively forced everyone onto a more viable path—and that path will only become broader over time.