A novel rapid method for detection of the illicit β₂-agonist additives in health foods and traditional Chinese patent medicines was developed with the desorption corona beam ionization mass spectrometry (DCBI-MS) technique.  The DCBI conditions including temperature and sample volume were optimized according to the resulting mass spectra intensity.  Matrix effect on 9 β₂-agonists additives was not significant in the proposed rapid determination procedure.  All of the 9 target molecules were detected within 1 min.  Quantification was achieved based on the typical fragment ion in MS² spectra of each analyte.  The method showed good linear coefficients in the range of 1−100 mg·L⁻¹ for all analytes.  The relative deviation values were between 14.29% and 25.13%.  Ten claimed antitussive and antiasthmatic health foods and traditional Chinese patent medicines from local pharmacies were analyzed.  All of them were negative with the proposed DCBI-MS method.  Without tedious sample pretreatments, the developed DCBI-MS is simple, rapid and sensitive for rapid qualification and semi-quantification of the illicit β₂-agonist additives in health foods and traditional Chinese patent medicines.