Online sales compliance with the electronic cigarettes ban in India: a content analysis
- PDF / 583,648 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 84 Downloads / 185 Views
(0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789(). ,- volV)
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Online sales compliance with the electronic cigarettes ban in India: a content analysis Beladenta Amalia1,2,3,4 Jugdeep Singh Rana5
•
Shivam Kapoor5 • Renu Sharma5 • Marcela Fu1,2,3,4 • Esteve Ferna´ndez1,2,3,4
•
Received: 13 March 2020 / Revised: 25 August 2020 / Accepted: 9 September 2020 Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) 2020
Abstract Objectives To investigate the availability of and to characterise the internet electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) vendors (IEVs) that continued to sell vaping devices in an Indian city despite the promulgation of an Indian Ordinance on 18th September 2019 that prohibits e-cigarettes nation-wide. Methods A structured internet search engine queries to identify IEVs. Subsequently, a content analysis to all identified IEVs was performed to check if they delivered vaping products to a New Delhi address (non-compliant with Indian Ordinance). Those non-compliant IEVs were then described according to some characteristics of interest. Results Sixteen out of 45 identified IEVs (35.6%) were not compliant with the Indian Ordinance. Amongst them, half were general e-commerce, 75.0% did not apply any age verification methods, and 56.3% did not feature health or safety warnings on their websites. Many of these IEVs employed a wide range of promotional strategies, such as price discounts, health benefits claims, and social networks utilisation. Conclusions E-cigarettes were still highly available and accessible in an Indian capital city through online sales following a bold step taken by the country to totally ban vaping products. Keywords E-cigarettes ENDS Policy India Internet Sales
Introduction Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01480-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Accumulated evidence has shown that many toxic substances are present in electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) aerosol, posing potential harms to the health of users and 1
Tobacco Control Unit, WHO Collaborating Centre for Tobacco Control, Catalan Institute of Oncology-ICO, Av. Granvia de l’Hospitalet, 199-203, 08908 L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
2
Tobacco Control Research Group, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute-IDIBELL, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
3
School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
4
Consortium for Biomedical Research in Respiratory Diseases (CIBERES), Madrid, Spain
5
International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), New Delhi, India
& Beladenta Amalia [email protected] Shivam Kapoor [email protected] Renu Sharma [email protected] Marcela Fu [email protected] Esteve Ferna´ndez [email protected] Jugdeep Singh Rana [email protected]
123
B. Amalia et al.
non-users (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine 2018). However, the global market of e-cigarettes is continuously growing,
Data Loading...
