Vietnam to amend 13-year-old tobacco control law as new nicotine products spread

Vietnam is preparing to overhaul its Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms, in force for 13 years, with the amended bill due to be submitted to the National Assembly at the session opening in October. Tien Phong reports that the redrafting is taking place as the market fills with new nicotine products — e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and oral nicotine pouches — that the original text was never written to cover.

Experts cited by the newspaper argue that policy should rest on scientific and evidence-based data, so that the rules are workable, enforceable and matched both to the characteristics of each product category and to conditions on the ground.

Prohibition moves from resolution into primary law

Resolution 173/2024/QH15 already bans the production, trading, import, storage, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in Vietnam from 1 January 2025. At the preliminary review session on the draft amendments held on 11 September, delegates broadly supported writing that prohibition into the tobacco control law itself, bringing it into line with the resolution and with the Investment Law. Several speakers said parts of the draft still need revision to be clear, consistent and enforceable.

The preliminary review report of the Standing Committee on Culture and Society of the National Assembly notes that the definitions of e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and other tobacco products are central to enforcing the ban. Some current definitions, it says, do not fully cover the range of product forms, raw materials and components involved, and the concepts overlap and lack consistency with one another. Permanent Deputy Minister of Health Vũ Mạnh Hà told the session that the drafting board would take on board as much of the committee's input as possible.

The informal market is missing from the impact assessment

One gap identified by Tien Phong is that data on smuggling and the informal market have not been fully reflected in the impact assessment behind the amendment. The risk is that management measures are designed against an incomplete picture of the market, widening the distance between policy objectives and enforcement results.

E-cigarettes and heated tobacco are the clearest illustration. Despite the prohibition in force since 1 January 2025, market data indicate that supply of these products already existed and circulated at significant scale.

What the shipment data show

The report “Smuggled Puffs: Illegal E-Cigarette Trade Across Borders”, published in April 2026 by the analytics and investigation provider ApiraSol, examined 84 legal shipments destined for Vietnam in 2024. Its findings include:

• Products were shipped from several countries in the region and entered through main gateways including Hanoi, Hai Phong and international airports.
• Imported goods now move through scattered flows rather than a single fixed route from producing to consuming country, branching across multiple channels with different declaration methods, documentation and customs authorities.
• Classification criteria were inconsistent even within this sample: the same line of devices and components was assigned to three different commodity codes, and many parts are hard to distinguish from ordinary electronic components.
• 70% of the shipments carried no data on the mode of transport, leaving identification and control at border gates inconsistent.
• E-cigarette exports from China to Vietnam reached $34.4 million in 2024, while Vietnam's official import figures stood at roughly $124,000 — a difference of almost $34.2 million that may reflect supply chains operating outside officially recorded import channels.

Definitions and technical standards

At a seminar on the draft law held in Hanoi on 26 August, Lê Thành Hưng, head of the agricultural and food quality standards division at the Vietnam Standards and Quality Institute under the Ministry of Science and Technology, proposed that legal definitions for new tobacco products reflect the technical characteristics of each product group, to avoid overlap and confusion and to make enforcement easier.

He suggested drawing on international standards and on the standardisation experience of other countries. China, he noted, is developing a national standard for heated tobacco that would cap the heating temperature of such devices at no more than 380°C. On oral tobacco and nicotine products, he said the harm from passive smoking is almost not apparent.

Tobacco control has become more complex as products shift away from conventional cigarettes towards higher-technology formats marketed as reducing harm for smokers. Tien Phong frames the amendment as an opportunity to build a more effective and workable regulatory framework, provided the process incorporates domestic expert input alongside a full reading of domestic market data and international experience.