Malaysia’s vape ban plan leaves 1.4 million users in regulatory limbo

The vapes used to be obvious. Bright displays of flavoured liquid, a shop just down the road, a transaction as unremarkable as buying shampoo. Batrisyia, 28, remembers how easy it was. Those days are gone. Or rather, in Malaysia at least, the trade has moved under the table. “It’s definitely less open now,” said Batrisyia, a Johor native who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for fear of backlash. “You don’t see big vape displays like before, and we can’t buy online any more. But it hasn’t disappeared. Some shops sell quietly behind the counter or in the back.” She paused, holding a slim, pen-like device in her hand. “You just have to ask for it.” The device is almost elegant in its simplicity: swap out the small pod cartridge, pick a flavour, inhale the vapour. It leaves no lingering smell on clothes or hands, none of cigarettes’ telltale signs. For Batrisyia, discretion was always part of the appeal. In her small town of Pontian, at the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia, that discretion has taken on a new dimension. Singapore is roughly 70km (43.5 miles) away by road – about an hour’s drive – and that proximity matters in a region where nicotine habits, contraband products and drug-laced vapes have landed users in serious legal trouble. Some sellers in her neighbourhood now operate out of premises that double as barbershops or other shopfronts. The product itself has not disappeared; it has simply learned to hide. Higher prices or talk about bans don’t really stop users Batrisyia*, Malaysian vaper When Malaysia’s government began signalling a nationwide crackdown, Batrisyia said the warnings changed nothing about how she vapes. “As long as it’s still available, people who already vape will usually find a way to get it,” she said. “Higher prices or talk about bans don’t really stop users. It just shifts where and how we buy.” Her real fear is what comes next. “I might switch to cigarettes, even though I don’t like the smell and how obvious it is,” she said. “If someone is already dependent on nicotine, removing one option doesn’t remove the dependence.” No excuses? The tension between policy intent and people’s lived realities run through the entire vaping debate in Malaysia. Johor has technically banned the sale and use of vape products since January 1, 2016, after a decree by the state’s Malay ruler, Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar, who ordered vape outlets shut. “I do not want to hear any excuses,” he said at the time. A decade later, Batrisyia still vapes. She just has to know who to ask. Now Putrajaya is moving on nationwide curbs. Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad has said the question is not whether to act, but how fast. The first phase, he told reporters in January, would target “open” systems: devices whose tanks users refill with liquid. “The first step is to ban the open pod system, which has been abused through the use of various synthetic drugs,” he said. Officials and lawmakers have discussed a full national ban by mid-2026 or by year-end, to run alongside stricter enforcement of the Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024, which came into force on October 1, 2024, governing sales, packaging, labelling and youth access. The Health Ministry has also proposed a tenfold jump in excise duty on vape liquids – from 40 sen to 4 ringgit (10 US cents to US$1) per millilitre – a proposal forwarded to the Finance Ministry but not yet approved. This Week in Asia made multiple attempts to obtain a definitive timeline from the Health Ministry and received no response. 1.4 million users In Selangor, a 25-year-old wealth planner who goes by Arsyad said he started vaping eight years ago as a way off cigarettes. Asked where he vapes today, he did not hesitate: “Office, car, home, literally everywhere.” If the government removes that option, he is equally candid about the outcome. “I’ll start smoking cigarettes [again],” he said. That is the uncomfortable arithmetic at the heart of Malaysia’s vaping dilemma. Policymakers are attempting to write a single law that simultaneously addresses four distinct realities: vaping as a public health risk; vaping as harm reduction; vaping as a product aggressively marketed to young people; and vaping as a tool conventional smokers use to quit. Regulators still have no reliable mechanism to separate legitimate products from illicit ones, according to public health policy expert Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia – a gap that leaves users with little way of knowing what they are actually inhaling. “In countries that allow e-cigarettes as tobacco harm reduction, liquids go through stringent safety checks at government-certified labs,” she said. “Without that, illicit vape liquids, including those tainted with drugs, can end up in the hands of adolescents, and that’s dangerous.” Global Adult Tobacco Survey data released in February 2024 shows 5.8 per cent of Malaysian adults – around 1.4 million people – currently use e-cigarettes, while conventional smoking remains far more widespread at 19 per cent, or roughly 4.8 million adults. A ban that nudges even a fraction of vapers back to cigarettes could reverse the public health gains it was meant to deliver, health advocates say. Consumer groups say the government’s mixed messaging has compounded the uncertainty, particularly around what gets restricted first and how the distinction between “open” and “closed” systems will be defined and enforced in practice. Samsul Kamal Ariffin, president of the Malaysian Organisation of Vape Entity consumer group, said users have been left largely in the dark. “The only thing that is clear right now is that they want to ban the closed system by June 2026,” he said, referring to sealed-pod devices – cheap, discreet and the format of choice for most users. “We are still not clear on anything else.” He champions regulation over prohibition. “If we regulate it, there are three factors that will win,” he said: consumers, business and the government “because of tax revenues”. A ban, he argues, achieves the opposite – driving untested, untraceable products deeper underground into the channels that enforcement finds hardest to reach. The Singapore lesson Across the Johor Strait, Singapore has run its zero-tolerance experiment for years and is tightening it further. Vaping is illegal in the city state, which recently tightened rules to target etomidate – an anaesthetic increasingly found in illicit vape products. Since September 1, the narcotic has been classified as a Class C controlled drug for six months, with new powers to channel offenders into rehabilitation. The results were immediate. In the four months to December 31, Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority caught and fined 3,534 people for possession and use of e-vaporisers, including 366 linked to etomidate-laced devices. A further 268 offenders were placed on rehabilitation programmes, and more than 41,000 devices and related components were seized at checkpoints. The penalties are deliberately severe. Travellers caught bringing a device across Singapore’s border face fines of up to S$10,000 (US$7,900) and up to six months’ jail for a first offence – up to S$20,000 and 12 months for repeat offenders. Those convicted of importing, selling or distributing etomidate-linked products face up to 20 years in prison and caning. And yet the market has not collapsed. It has just gone underground. A Singaporean entrepreneur who regularly works in Malaysia described vaping in the city state as something that “feels very underground” – a market built on risk calculations and quiet trust. Sellers were cautious and selective, he said, dealing mainly with familiar faces. He asked to remain anonymous, fearing government reprisal. Crossing the border changes the upfront cost. In Malaysia, a vape device costs roughly 50 ringgit. Back home in Singapore, a city of 6.11 million people where possession is a criminal offence, the equivalent device costs around S$37, or roughly 115 ringgit. “Crossing the border does not stop the habit,” the entrepreneur said. “But it does make it more costly and disruptive.” The nightmare scenario Malaysia is not waiting for a national ban before it begins policing an industry that has already partly slipped out of the law’s view. In early February, police launched “Ops E-Cig Mega”, a coordinated nationwide sweep targeting 154 locations. Authorities seized vape devices and liquids worth 8.88 million ringgit, recorded 199 cases, confiscated more than 959 litres of vape liquid and 83,289 devices, and made four arrests, according to state news agency Bernama. Fisol Salleh, a senior police official, said the operation was designed partly to prevent “revenue leakage to the black market” and to curb the distribution of unregistered e-cigarettes, particularly among young people and students. That phrase – leakage to the black market – captures the nightmare scenario Malaysian policymakers are most anxious to avoid: a national ban that converts vaping into an enforcement problem on the scale of illicit tobacco, draining resources without reliably suppressing demand. The World Health Organization’s Malaysia office has urged the government to proceed with a ban, warning that youth vaping has surged and criminal syndicates are exploiting regulatory gaps, in some cases by lacing products with illicit substances. WHO’s global guidance has also flagged how aggressively e-cigarettes are marketed to teenagers and how quickly youth use can outpace adult rates in markets with weak controls. Batrisyia has lived through a version of this for a decade. She lives in a state that banned vape sales before most of the world had encountered a sealed-pod device. She still vapes. The ban changed the packaging, not the habit – and she does not expect a national crackdown to change that. “If it becomes harder to get, people won’t just stop,” she said. “They’ll just find another way.”

Malaysia’s vape ban plan leaves 1.4 million users in regulatory limbo

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}An estimated 1.4 million Malaysian adults vape, despite existing curbs. Many say new laws will simply push them back to cigarettes

An estimated 1.4 million Malaysian adults vape, despite existing curbs. Many say new laws will simply push them back to cigarettes