Abstract: In order to establish a general method to determine the volatile compounds in water-based cigarette adhesives, a headspace-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (HS-GC/MS) method for determining 18 volatile compounds in water-based cigarette adhesives was established. The method used 10 mL water as the matrix correction agent, and adopting the static headspace sampling to quantify with an internal standard. The results showed that: 1) The volatile compounds were separated effectively within 26 min. All the volatile compounds had a good linear relationship (R² > 0.999). The recoveries of 18 volatile compounds were in the range of 80.4%-127.8% at three spike levels with relative standard deviations no more than 7.9%. The LODs of 18 volatile compounds ranged from 0.004 to 6.932 mg/kg. This method is convenient, environment-friendly, universal and of high throughput, it is suitable for determining the volatile compounds in water-based adhesives.