Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) is continuing his push to crack down on illegal vapes sent from China.

Cotton’s latest bill, the Eliminating Nefarious Distribution of Smuggled Chinese Vapes Act (ENDS Chinese Vapes Act), comes as President Donald Trump prepares to meet with China’s Xi Jinping to address a litany of issues. His bill was obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.

Cotton’s ENDS Chinese Vapes Act follow years of advocacy by the Arkansas lawmaker on behalf of families and children in America who have been targeted by flavored vapes in particular that China has illegally sent into America.

“Dangerous, illegal Chinese vapes threaten the health of our children,” Cotton explained to the Reporter. “My bill would increase the penalty on companies that enable Communist China to sell these dangerous devices in American markets.” 

The ENDS Chinese Vapes Act works to punish importers of illegal Chinese vapes by increasing the civil penalties for importing them. The penalty structure is $500 per vape unit for violations involving ordinary negligence; $1,000 per vape unit for violations involving gross negligence; and $5,000 per vape unit for violations involving fraud or knowing mislabeling.

These penalties could quickly rise to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the illegal shipments.

Under the bill, those penalties “double if the shipment involved transshipment, false country-of-origin declarations, or other evasion tactics, and triple for repeat offenders within a three-year period,” Cotton’s office explained. “The combined penalty is capped at 1,000 percent of the shipment’s estimated retail value in the United States.”

Early on in the Trump administration, Cotton wrote to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary about the concerns he has with illicit Chinese nicotine products. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice, FDA, and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have been particularly effective at combatting illegal Chinese vapes, according to multiple analyses by the Reporter.