Vietnam's National Assembly to Review Revised Tobacco-Control Law Covering Vapes and Heated Tobacco

Vietnam's National Assembly is preparing to examine a revised draft of the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms, the statute that has governed the country's tobacco market since its adoption in 2012 and has now been in force for more than 13 years. According to SVVN, published by the Tiền Phong group, the amendment has to absorb rapid changes in technology, e-commerce and business models, along with product categories that did not exist when the law was written.

The Ministry of Health has proposed a series of new provisions. The most commercially significant would widen the law's scope to cover electronic cigarettes, heated tobacco products and a residual category described as “other tobacco products”. That expansion turns a public-health measure into a market-definition exercise, because the same wording will determine which goods may be produced, imported and sold in Vietnam, and which may not.

Definitions decide how far a ban actually reaches

Lê Đại Hải, former Deputy Director General of the Department of Civil and Economic Law at the Ministry of Justice, said the sheer breadth of these policies calls for greater caution over legislative quality, and that a partial amendment may not be enough to address fundamental shifts in the market and in technology.

Several National Assembly deputies made a related point: the value of a prohibition depends on the quality of the legal definitions behind it. As the draft moves from electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco to the wider notion of “other tobacco products”, the issue is no longer only the regulatory objective but the identification of what is being regulated. Nguyễn Quỳnh Liên, a full-time member of the Committee on Law and Justice, said the concepts used must be specific enough to enforce and broad enough not to fall behind technological development. Lê Đại Hải warned that if the underlying definitions are not properly standardised, regulators will keep struggling with new products and will again face pressure to amend the law. Whether lawmakers choose prohibition or regulated commercialisation, he said, effective oversight rests on a clear system of technical standards and regulations.

China's standards work cited as a reference point

The Vietnamese debate has drawn on China's handling of the same product classes. China has not issued a dedicated legal framework for heated tobacco products or nicotine pouches on its domestic market, although individual use is permitted, yet the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) has moved ahead with a national system of technical standards for these categories. Lê Thành Hưng, head of the agriculture and food standards division at the Vietnam Standards and Quality Institute under the Ministry of Science and Technology, cited concrete parameters:

• China's draft national standard limits the temperature of the device heating the tobacco material in heated tobacco products to no more than 380°C.
• Combustion in conventional smoking takes place at 700°C to 1,000°C.
• For oral tobacco, harm from second-hand exposure is described as almost imperceptible.

For manufacturers and importers, figures of that kind work as entry criteria: a numerical threshold written into a standard decides which devices and consumables qualify for a given regulatory category and which fall outside it. Vietnam's draft carries no comparable technical benchmark.

Investment climate weighed alongside control measures

The discussion extends beyond the tobacco industry. The current institutional overhaul is being framed around a broader principle: that law should not only manage risk but also create momentum for development, with rules built on scientific data, comprehensive socio-economic impact assessment and the capacity to adapt to technological change.

Lê Đại Hải argued the revision should answer not only “what is banned” but also “how it will be managed”. Legislation needs transparent boundaries so that citizens know what is permitted, companies know which investment directions are protected, and regulators have sufficient grounds for consistent enforcement. Expanding prohibitions while foundational legal concepts remain unclear risks opening new regulatory gaps instead of closing the existing ones. With Vietnam pursuing the goal of becoming a destination for innovation and high-technology investment, he said, each legislative decision should be assessed not only as immediate risk control but for its long-term effect on the investment environment, national competitiveness and the economy's ability to adapt — calling for “comprehensive research, based on evidence-based scientific data and multidimensional socio-economic impact assessment” rather than a hurried revision made only to satisfy immediate consistency requirements.