Asia: Market and regulatory data analysis of the vaping sector

17th May 2024: Malaysia: The health minister said yesterday (16th May) that the regulations implementing the Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024 will be issued in June 2024, press reports. These regulations are needed to implement the law, published in February 2024, which created a regulatory framework for e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.
15th May 2024: South Korea: The government is planning to amend the tobacco law to regulate synthetic nicotine, press reports. This would end the legal loophole whereby e-liquids containing synthetic nicotine can be freely circulated in the country due to the fact that the definition of electronic cigarettes only encompasses naturally derived nicotine. Closing this loophole has been on the government’s agenda for a few years now.
14th May 2024: US - Federal: The White House has released a statement on what it refers to as “China’s unfair trade practices concerning technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation”, which it says “are threatening American businesses and workers”. In response, president Biden is directing his trade representative to increase certain tariffs. These include the tariff rate on lithium-ion batteries (used in non-electric vehicles), which will increase from 7.5% to 25% in 2026. This would impact batteries used in vaping and heated tobacco products.
14th May 2024: Thailand: At a forum on “Protecting Children and Youth from E-Cigarettes” held yesterday (13th May), the National Health Commission Office, government stakeholders and other members of society adopted measures to prevent and control the spread of e-cigarettes, including raising awareness of the dangers and addiction, monitoring and enforcing laws, and confirming policies and measures to prevent and suppress the spread of e-cigarettes.
14th May 2024: Vietnam: Prime minister Pham Minh Chinh has signed Official Dispatch 47/CD-TTg requesting several ministries to strengthen the control of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco and take action to prevent their harmful effects. Specifically, the dispatch asks the Ministry of Health to promote solutions to manage these products, the Ministry of Finance to instruct customs to strictly inspect and control transportation of illegal products at borders, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade to strengthen control over organisations that trade and store the products, among other requests.
9th May 2024: Philippines: President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. called on the Bureau of Customs (BoC) and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to expand and strengthen their efforts against smuggling of tobacco and vape products. BIR commissioner Romeo Lumagui Jr. told the president that his agency has intensified its crackdown against smuggled vape products and is going to implement a tax stamp system to determine those that are illicit. As of 1st June 2024, all manufactured or imported vapour products have to carry the internal revenue stamp, according to Revenue Memorandum Circular 105-2023.
8th May 2024: China: Today is the last day to comment on the amendment of the E-cigarette Transaction Management Detailed Rules, which would establish a national unified management platform for e-cigarette transactions, through which e-cigarette and e-cigarette raw material manufacturers and retailers would have to conduct their transactions, including importing and exporting. Basic product information would be maintained on the platform.
6th May 2024: United Arab Emirates: The Federal Tax Authority reported that in 2023 its control efforts resulted in the seizure and confiscation of nearly 21.29m units of tobacco products that didn’t bear the Digital Tax Stamp (DTS). Last year, it was announced that in 2022, a total of 5.5m units of tobacco products without the DTS were confiscated.
6th May 2024: Vietnam: In a meeting organised by the Social Committee of the National Assembly, the Ministry of Industry and Trade insisted on the creation of a pilot programme for e-cigarettes and heated tobacco, press reports. During the process of developing a policy on the issue, all other ministries agreed with the pilot project, except for the Ministry of Health, which advised amending the Tobacco Harm Prevention and Control Act to ban these products. At the end of the meeting, the chairman of the Social Committee suggested that the Ministry of Health coordinate with relevant ministries and stakeholders to review legal documents to "prevent the harmful effects of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco".
2nd May 2024: Kuwait: Abeer Al-Bahwa, director of the Health Promotion Department at the Ministry of Health, highlighted the ministry’s concern over the spread of e-cigarette usage among 13- to 15-year-olds, and called for stricter regulation, arguing that young e-cigarette users are approximately three times more likely to transition to traditional cigarettes later in life, press reports.
2nd May 2024: Philippines: House of Representatives member Ray Reyes, of the minority Anakalusugan Party List, urged legislators to review the Vape Law to transfer the mandate to regulate vaping and heated tobacco products back from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He said: “We’ve been warning everyone for years on the mistake of putting the vape law under DTI supervision.” Only two years have passed, he added, “and now we see the consequences of it”, referring to growing concern over e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI) among youth.

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