The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has banned the smoking of electronic cigarettes in public areas. Guangming Daily comments:

E-cigarette promoters claim that the "high-tech" gadgets do not contain tar or produce particulate matter, as if smoking e-cigarettes does no harm to health. And many people, including nonsmokers, buy the idea. Some smokers even use e-cigarettes as an aid to give up smoking.

In fact, plenty of studies have proved that e-cigarettes are no different from traditional cigarettes when it comes to perniciousness, as both contain nicotine, the addictive and noxious chemical that develops smokers' dependence on tobacco.

The main components of e-cigarettes include nicotine, synthetic perfumes and volatile compounds, most of which are harmful to health. Inhaling such a noxious mix is not only addictive but dangerous.

But few advertisements for e-cigarettes point out these potential dangers. In other words, only depicting them as a more healthy substitute for conventional cigarettes is itself pernicious.

The World Health Organization has organized special research into the effects of e-cigarette and concluded that they harm public health. It has called for them to be strictly controlled and for nonsmokers, particularly adolescents, to be protected from the negative influence of e-cigarettes.

There are still not specific national standards for the production and selling of e-cigarettes. The market supervisory and administrative authorities in China banned selling e-cigarettes to juveniles in August. China has more than 300 million smokers, and about 750 million second-hand smokers. It is estimated that diseases caused by smoking is responsible for at least 1 million deaths in the country each year.

Now is the time for e-cigarettes to be put in their cross hairs of the national anti-smoking efforts.