---
title: "E-cigarettes, stripped of their 'sugar coating'"
description: "Overnight, a message spread rapidly through the private channels of e-cigarette stores: 'After May 1st, only tobacco flavor will be available, so stock up while you can.' The shockwaves extended beyond social media, as RLX Technology, the parent company of RELX, saw its stock plummet over 36% despite reporting strong 2021 results with revenue up 123.1% year-on-year and gross profit up 140.4%. This follows the release of the 'Second Draft for Comments on E-cigarettes' by regulators, which explicitly states that 'aerosol should not present product characteristic flavors other than tobacco.'"
author: "文烨豪"
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published: "2022-03-15"
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# E-cigarettes, stripped of their 'sugar coating'

> Overnight, a message spread rapidly through the private channels of e-cigarette stores: 'After May 1st, only tobacco flavor will be available, so stock up while you can.' The shockwaves extended beyond social media, as RLX Technology, the parent company of RELX, saw its stock plummet over 36% despite reporting strong 2021 results with revenue up 123.1% year-on-year and gross profit up 140.4%. This follows the release of the 'Second Draft for Comments on E-cigarettes' by regulators, which explicitly states that 'aerosol should not present product characteristic flavors other than tobacco.'

Overnight, a message spread rapidly through the private channels of e-cigarette stores of all sizes.
"After May 1st, only tobacco flavor will be available, so stock up while you can."
The shockwaves extended beyond social media.
RLX Technology, the parent company of RELX, saw its stock plummet over 36%, and this came after it delivered impressive 2021 financial results with revenue up 123.1% year-on-year and gross profit up 140.4%.
All of this stems from the 'Second Draft for Comments on E-cigarettes' released by regulators yesterday, which explicitly states that 'aerosol should not present product characteristic flavors other than tobacco.'
This means that the 'sugar coating' that e-cigarettes have been wrapped in is about to be stripped away.

## **Nicotine addiction and oral desire**

The story of e-cigarettes originates from the philosophical musings of a Chinese pharmacist plagued by nicotine addiction.
In 2003, Han Li, the 'father of e-cigarettes,' was devastated by his father's death from lung cancer and resolved to quit cigarettes, the 'root of all evil.'
For long-time smokers who suffer constipation without cigarettes, smoking serves two purposes: to get nicotine and to satisfy the habit of 'picking up,' 'inhaling,' and 'exhaling.' In an era when nicotine patches and nicotine gum were being invented, nicotine was easy to quit, but the habit was hard to break.
Han Li felt the same way. After briefly trying nicotine patches, he found them unsatisfying and was determined to create a product that could both deliver nicotine and allow users to 'blow smoke rings.' A device that heated and vaporized nicotine liquid was born.
Thus, from its inception, e-cigarettes were designed to help people quit smoking. However, their original purpose seems to have gradually shifted under the influence of the consumer market.
Today, in e-cigarette stores on street corners, a variety of fruit, beverage, and tea-flavored pods are everywhere, and even bizarre flavors like beer and stinky tofu are not uncommon.
If you don't walk into a store with the intention of 'restocking your supply,' the staff will often pull out a battered demo device from the counter, attach a disposable mouthpiece, and hand it to you to fully experience the various flavors.
"Mango and lemon tea are selling well; you can try them." "For ladies, you might like this rose flavor; many young women love it." "The mint flavor has a strong cooling sensation, and with 5% nicotine, two puffs will satisfy your craving."
These dazzling flavors and the tailored sales pitches for different customer groups paint a picture of today's physical e-cigarette stores.
Among the many flavors, it is the non-tobacco flavors that truly drive store sales. According to a survey by an industry media outlet, non-tobacco flavored products account for over 90% of sales in e-cigarette stores, while tobacco flavors rank far behind.
Although practitioners often describe e-cigarettes as 'tobacco replacement for harm reduction,' most have to admit that the variety of appealing flavors is the biggest draw for consumers.
Looking at the pod products of leading brand RELX, names like 'Summer Green Mango,' 'Banana Milkshake,' 'Peach Oolong,' and 'Iced Brewed Lychee'—with their tempting descriptions and carefully designed packaging—constantly embed the word 'delicious' into consumers' minds.
Within the e-cigarette industry and among enthusiasts, discussions often revolve around the term 'reduction degree,' which refers to how faithfully the aerosol replicates the flavor of the liquid. In the job market, experienced e-liquid mixers can command salaries starting at 10,000 yuan per month.
A strawberry-flavored pod that can deliver the sweetness of strawberry flesh and the freshness of strawberry leaves, along with a olfactory reproduction of the strawberry scent, will be highly praised by e-cigarette enthusiasts.
Moreover, in the niche DIY e-cigarette community, players painstakingly study wattage and resistance combinations, test different atomizers and e-liquids, all to experience the full release of the liquid's top, middle, and base notes during a three-second puff. It may seem esoteric, but it's a source of great fascination for players.
An industry media outlet once coined a concept: 'flavor addiction.' Humans are naturally predisposed to prefer sweet and cool tastes, and most e-cigarette flavors are based on sweetness and coolness. Therefore, a significant number of non-heavy smokers are not vaping for nicotine but for the flavors.
Consumer preferences naturally do not go unnoticed by major e-cigarette brands. As a result, brands constantly innovate, updating their flavor arrays and even linking pod flavors to marketing campaigns.
For example, leading brand MOTI launched a 'Frozen Strawberry' flavor last summer, emphasizing 'coolness'; in autumn, during the osmanthus blooming season, it introduced 'Osmanthus Tea Fragrance,' tying the new product to the season.
When the market narrative shifts from 'nicotine addiction' to 'taste,' e-cigarettes, which were meant to replace tobacco, seem to have become tools for satisfying oral desires, thus donning a 'sugar coating.'

## **Is stripping the sugar coating bad news?**

Jiang Man, a recent graduate who considers himself an e-cigarette enthusiast, transitioned from cigarettes to e-cigarettes and doesn't have a heavy nicotine addiction. He used to smoke only two or three cigarettes a day, but now he goes through an entire pod daily.
"With cigarettes, there's a sense of guilt, so I only smoked when I was bored. E-cigarettes taste good, and the guilt isn't as strong. While gaming, I take one puff after another and unknowingly vape until I feel dizzy."
This phenomenon is common among young people. U.S. tobacco control organizations have identified flavored e-cigarettes as the primary culprit in minors' exposure to and addiction to e-cigarettes.
In other words, if users follow the logic of 'flavor addiction,' they are prone to overuse, potentially transitioning from 'non-heavy smokers' to 'heavy e-cigarette users.' This clearly contradicts the global goal of reducing the smoking population.
On the other hand, the rich flavors of e-cigarettes also raise safety concerns.
To briefly explain, mainstream e-cigarette e-liquids are primarily composed of propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, nicotine, and flavorings. The first two serve as a 'base' to dissolve nicotine and flavorings and produce vapor to stimulate the throat, providing the so-called 'throat hit' along with nicotine; nicotine is for 'satisfying addiction'; and flavorings provide the taste.
Compared to the over 5,000 chemicals produced by the high-temperature combustion of traditional tobacco, e-cigarette ingredients are relatively simple, which is the theoretical basis for their 'harm reduction' claim. However, in reality, compared to fixed ingredients like propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, whether inhaling different combinations of flavorings has negative effects on human health is difficult to verify academically.
In 2015, the internationally renowned brand Five Pawns faced public backlash after its e-liquid was found to contain diacetyl, a chemical linked to respiratory disease. At that time, there were about 8,000 flavorings added to e-liquids in the U.S. market, making it impossible to test each one.
Two years ago, the U.S. FDA implemented a policy to remove all flavored e-cigarette products from the market, allowing only tobacco and menthol flavors to be sold.
If the previous national standard draft for e-cigarettes still allowed 122 additives, including coffee and cocoa extracts and citral, the flavor restrictions in this 'Second Draft for Comments on E-cigarettes' seem to follow the FDA's 'flavor ban.'
The draft also states: 'Aerosol should contain nicotine.' If 'aerosol' refers to all vaping devices, then recent industry gimmicks like 'herbal vaping' and '0 nicotine' would also be cut off. Additionally, for the DIY community that has remained outside regulation, the draft explicitly prohibits the sale of open systems, including refillable large-cloud devices and small devices.
This means that the logic of 'flavor addiction' will completely disappear, and the 'sugar coating' of e-cigarettes will finally be stripped away. After all, in the e-cigarette industry, such draft comments carry almost the same weight as regulations.
"Every brand tries to mimic the taste of real cigarettes, but in reality, they either taste like nuts or coffee, and they're not good," said a long-time smoker. The widespread pessimism in the industry also suggests that e-cigarettes without rich flavors are likely to face a demand slump.
The question is whether this slump is good or bad.
For the industry and stores, a sharp decline in e-cigarette appeal is clearly bad news. But from the perspective of society as a whole, e-cigarettes, which were born for 'harm reduction,' have been operating in a gray area for over a decade. Moving toward regulation and returning to their original purpose is undoubtedly good news.

Source: Photon Planet (ID: TMTweb)

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