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Exploitation of the COVID-19 pandemic by e-cigarette marketers
  1. Divya Ramamurthi,
  2. Cindy Chau,
  3. Robert K Jackler
  1. Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Professor Robert K Jackler, Stanford Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA; jackler{at}stanford.edu

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2020-055855

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    Introduction

    Over the last decade, a wide variety of e-cigarette advertisements have claimed superior healthfulness compared with cigarettes.1 Recently, we recognised a novel form of health reassurance advertising, promotion of e-cigarettes via COVID-19 pandemic themes. This led us to systematically explore COVID-19 marketing of e-cigarette brands and vape stores on their websites and Instagram accounts. We have collected over 300 COVID-19 themed e-cigarette promotional images and posted them to our online repository (tobacco.stanford.edu/COVID-19).2 These images represent 21 e-cigarette brands and 41 online vaping stores that vend multiple brands. The COVID-19 messaging in these advertisements took several forms.

    Buy our vaping product, receive a free gift of essential supplies

    As essential supplies became scarce in stores, e-cigarette brands offered these much-needed supplies, including masks, toilet paper rolls and hand sanitisers, as gifts contingent on the purchase of vaping products (figure 1). Some brands (eg, Podsalt, BLVK and One Drop Vape) offered free hand sanitiser with the purchase of any of its products. Podsalt described its sanitiser as ‘WHO recommended’ and claimed that it ‘kills 99.9% of bacteria’.3 VaporDNA offered two strengths of CBD-enriched hand sanitisers (50 mg and 200 mg), while Vape Craft offered the option of sanitiser with or without CBD.4 5 The British nicotine liquid manufacturer MyVapery/Xyfil claimed that it has transformed 80% of its production capacity to produce 50 000 alcohol-based hand sanitisers per day.6 The brand created a website (https://www.handsanitising.com/) and Instagram page (@handsanitising) to market its brand of hand sanitiser.7

    Figure 1

    Examples of essential pandemic supplies (eg, hand sanitisers, masks and toilet paper) offered by e-cigarette companies as a bonus to spur sales. In the case of Vintage Vapor, they appear to have added these essential supplies to their product line offered for sale. Note that some of the hand sanitisers come in the company’s e-liquid bottles, raising concern over potential accidental use …

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors RKJ conceived the paper. RKJ and DR wrote the manuscript. All three authors sourced images for the paper and edited the manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.