Evade Magazine has discovered the Chinese-based e-cig company HelloCig continues to sell erectile dysfunction drugs in the US despite a warning from the government.
Last week the U.S Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced they had issued a warning letter to the company after they were found to be illegally selling e-liquid products intended for vaping that contained prescription drugs; such as viagra and weight loss medication.
This comes after a crackdown on other e-cig companies in an attempt to curb an epidemic of teen vaping. A study in December last year found 38.8% of American students in their final year of high school had used a vape to smoke nicotine, marijuana, or just flavouring, which was up 3.3% from 2015. Smoking has considerably dropped since the 90s.
The FDA said “there are no e-liquid products approved to contain prescription drugs or any other medications that require a doctor’s supervision”. HelloCig originally claimed they had been. Following the warning, the company subsequently wiped these products from their website.
It has come to our attention that you can still buy viagra by requesting the flavours in the checkout message box when purchasing a product called ‘Vitamine HelloCig E-Liquid’.
After reading about the so-called healthcare flavours this company was selling, we decided to browse their website. Luckily enough for us, a support chat box popped up. We just couldn’t resist.
A generic stock photo ‘support agent’ called ‘Cigs’ - presumably a Chinese employee based on their language skills – told us “you can order vitamine, leave the message – flavour”. Despite the broken English, it was easy to understand this was them telling us to use the message box at checkout to request viagra e-liquids.
They had originally told us it was not in stock because “fed warning us now, very bad” but it could be available “maybe some days, maybe never”. Make of this what you will, but we thoroughly believe they are attempting to sell their remaining stock under the radar, or at the very least, dispute the FDA’s disapproval and then relaunch the products on their website.
The FDA has given the company 15 working days to respond. So we’ll see what comes of this.
