A content analysis of e-cigarette manufacturer websites in China shows similar misleading clains as elsewhere

Tingting Yao and colleagues here at UCSF just published "A content analysis of electronic cigarette manufacturer websites in China" in Tobacco Control.  Here is the abstract:
 
Objective The goal of this study was to summarise the websites of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) manufacturers in China and describe how they market their products.
Methods From March to April 2013, we used two search keywords ‘electronic cigarette’ (Dian Zi Xiang Yan in Chinese) and ‘manufacturer’ (Sheng Chan Chang Jia in Chinese) to search e-cigarette manufacturers in China on Alibaba, an internet-based e-commerce business that covers business-to-business online marketplaces, retail and payment platforms, shopping search engine and datacentric cloud computing services. A total of 18 websites of 12 e-cigarette manufacturers in China were analysed by using a coding guide which includes 14 marketing claims.
Results Health-related benefits were claimed most frequently (89%), followed by the claims of no secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure (78%), and utility for smoking cessation (67%). A wide variety of flavours, celebrity endorsements and e-cigarettes specifically for women were presented. None of the websites had any age restriction on access, references to government regulation or lawsuits. Instruction on how to use e-cigarettes was on 17% of the websites.
Conclusions Better regulation of e-cigarette marketing messages on manufacturers’ websites is needed in China. The frequent claims of health benefits, smoking cessation, strategies appealing to youth and women are concerning, especially targeting women. Regulators should prohibit marketing claims of health benefits, no SHS exposure and value for smoking cessation in China until health-related, quality and safety issues have been adequately addressed. To avoid e-cigarette use for initiation to nicotine addiction, messages tar
 
The full paper is available here.