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Author: Bai Tieyi

Link: /question/20630274/ answer/1668 1590.

Source: Zhihu.

According to the legislation of the first country, the tobacco industry is a special industry with a monopoly system. Human, financial, material, production, supply and sales are managed by the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau (China Tobacco Corporation) and its subordinate institutions. Compared with other industries, the whole industry is relatively closed, and the mandatory and planned working mode still dominates. E-commerce of cigarettes and other commodities is still in the exploratory stage. Of course, even if e-commerce is implemented, it is also an online transaction within the industry, because in addition to tobacco cultivation, tobacco purchase, cigarette production, sales and management are all in the hands of the state. E-commerce, whether B2C or C2C, violates the government's original management intention for this industry. Of course, it also involves huge industry interests.

Second, from the regulatory point of view, smoking is harmful to the human body. Although no organization or individual (including the World Health Organization) has produced detailed demonstration materials, tobacco control is the mainstream trend from the perspective of the whole world environment. At present, the production and sales of tobacco are in the hands of the government, which is well controlled. Once it is open or personal intervention, the essence of commercial pursuit of interests will drive it to adopt various means to expand the scale of production and sales, and even make profits by manufacturing and selling fake cigarettes (tobacco is profiteering). However, the mode of e-commerce has not been well regulated so far. Although some government departments are trying to legislate, the cost of law enforcement is too high, and the commercial transactions in the online world are still in a disorderly state to a large extent, which also brings great difficulties to supervision.

Third, the tobacco industry has a heavy tax, which is why the government will not let this cake go for some time. Once selling cigarettes online becomes a trend, a large amount of tax evaded will become unbearable pain for local governments, including the central government. You know, in some provinces and cities, tobacco tax still accounts for a considerable proportion of their fiscal revenue.

Fourth, tobacco control is the trend of the world. As mentioned above, cigarettes, as a hobby, will not give up once they are smoked for a short time. Most of those who claim to quit smoking for a few days and months are fake smokers. However, from the perspective of national health, it is natural for the government to take measures to moderately control the size of cigarettes. Therefore, the government will issue production targets to every cigarette manufacturer every year, and cigarettes that exceed the targets should be destroyed. If the channel of selling cigarettes online is opened, these prolific cigarettes are likely to become their sources of supply in various ways, which objectively increases the scale of cigarette production and sales, which is inconsistent with the purpose of tobacco control.