“They look like, feel like and taste like traditional tobacco, yet they aren’t,” the blurb reads. “They are a truly healthier and satisfying alternative. Join the revolution today!”
Smoking Everywhere, a Florida-based company, proclaims it “a much better way to smoke,” while a clip on YouTube features an employee of the NJoy brand promoting its e-cigarettes at CES, the international consumer technology trade show.
Online sales make it even more difficult to regulate the industry, which still falls in a gray area in many countries.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has “detained and refused” several brands of electronic cigarettes because they were considered unapproved new drugs and could not be legally marketed in the country, press officer Christopher Kelly said.
He did not give more details, but said the determination of whether an e-cigarette is a drug is made on a case-by-case basis after the agency considers its intended use, labeling and advertising.
In Australia, the sale of electronic cigarettes containing nicotine is banned. In the UK, the products appear to be unregulated and are sold in pubs.
Smoking is tightly woven into the fabric of daily life in Ruyan’s home turf of China, the world’s largest tobacco market where about 2 trillion cigarettes are sold every year.
Tobacco sales, the biggest source of government revenue, brought in US$61 billion in the first 11 months of last year, up 18 percent from 2007, the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper said.
Ruyan is suing a Beijing newspaper for questioning its safety and for claiming in 2006 that its products have more nicotine than regular cigarettes.
Miu Nam, Ruyan’s executive director, blames the newspaper for a hit in sales and profits but declined to give details.
“We have to restore consumers’ confidence, we have to clean up people’s doubts,” Miu said.
An operator at the Beijing Times refused to transfer calls seeking comment on Friday to managers at the newspaper.
A reporter said she had heard of the case but would not give any details.
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