The Future of Nicotine in Vietnam: Beyond 2026

Vietnam regulates nicotine by naming products, one category at a time, and the next name is due before the National Assembly in October 2026. That is what the dated record supports and it is as far as this page goes. What follows is the list of instruments, what each covers, and when each takes effect, so you can follow the same documents we follow. It does not tell you how the vote lands. Nobody selling you a nicotine product is in a position to know that.

Be blunt about the second half of that sentence. VinaPouches sells oral nicotine pouches in Vietnam. We are not a neutral party to the question of whether oral nicotine pouches get prohibited here, and you should discount anything comforting you read from us on the subject — including anything comforting we might be tempted to write. So there is none. This is general information, dated, and not legal advice.

The pattern: Vietnam legislates by naming the product

Read the instruments in order and one mechanism repeats. Vietnamese nicotine law attaches to named categories rather than to nicotine as a substance, so where a product sits depends on whether a drafter has written its name down yet.

The Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms No. 09/2012/QH13 is the base statute. It defines a tobacco product by reference to tobacco material — the leaf — and builds its smoke-free places, advertising restrictions and age limit on top of that definition, with penalties supplied by Decree 117/2020/ND-CP. A product containing no tobacco material was not on the table when it was written.

Resolution 173/2024/QH15, adopted on 30 November 2024 and applying from 1 January 2025, did not touch that definition. It added two named categories instead, prohibiting the production, trade, import, storage, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. The penalties arrived a year later in Decree 371/2025/ND-CP, in force from 31 December 2025, at 3,000,000–5,000,000 VND for an individual using them. Our detailed treatment of that regime is the guide to the vape ban.

Two categories, added by name, made enforceable by a later decree. That sequence — prohibition first, penalties afterwards — is the shape of the machine, and it explains why a headline about a ban and the rule an officer can actually apply can sit a year apart.

July 2026: two documents, ten days apart

One month produced two texts that point the same way and disagree on a phrase.

• The Ministry of Health's draft amendment, in the version dated 20 July 2026, adds a category of "other new tobacco products" and names nicotine pouches in it, alongside inhalable nicotine products and shisha.
• Resolution 160/NQ-CP, endorsed by the government on 30 July 2026, is the policy framework for amending the tobacco law. Reporting lists its scope as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products and other novel tobacco products. Oral nicotine pouches are not in that named list. It also carries a prohibition on displaying the covered products at wholesale and retail points of sale.

The framework resolution leaves the category phrase open; the health ministry's draft fills it in a way that includes pouches. Neither is in force. We take that gap apart at length in our piece on Resolution 160/NQ-CP and what it says about pouches.

The drafting decision underneath all of it

Beneath the calendar sits one technical question, and every future headline will turn on it, so it is worth understanding once.

The category names in this legislation are built around a physical process. An e-cigarette heats a liquid and produces an inhaled aerosol. A heated tobacco product heats processed tobacco leaf. A tobacco-free oral pouch does neither: fleece, nicotine, plant fibre, flavouring, water and a pH regulator, held between lip and gum, with no device, no combustion, no leaf and nothing inhaled.

So the drafters face a choice. Does the amended law's category follow the tobacco material, the way the 2012 statute does, or follow the nicotine, the way the health ministry's July draft does? Those two options put oral pouches in different places. We are not going to tell you which one wins, and a retailer who does is guessing at your expense.

What the WHO has asked for

External pressure is part of the direction of travel and it is on the public record. Dr Angela Pratt, the WHO Representative in Vietnam, has asked for a comprehensive ban that names nicotine pouches, a point-of-sale display ban, stronger pack warnings and the removal of designated indoor smoking areas. WHO's projection for the package as a whole is 2.1 million fewer smokers in Vietnam by 2031 and around 700,000 premature deaths prevented over the following decades.

Those are WHO's figures for tobacco-control reform in general, not a measurement of any single product category. We repeat them because they are the stated basis for the policy, not because we are in a position to check them.

Retail changes even where a product stays on the shelf

The point-of-sale display clause deserves more attention than it gets, because it is the measure that reaches shops rather than users. A display ban governs how a product may be merchandised without deciding whether it may be sold at all. Anyone trying to picture the next few years of selling nicotine in Vietnam should watch that clause more closely than the headline prohibitions: across both the resolution and the WHO asks, the movement is toward tighter control of visibility, packaging and place, applied to tobacco generally rather than to novel products alone.

The calendar, which is not a forecast

These are the dates on the published record as at 2 August 2026. Read the list as a chronology, not as a line extended into the future.

• 1 January 2025 — Resolution 173/2024/QH15 applies. E-cigarettes and heated tobacco products prohibited.
• 31 December 2025 — Decree 371/2025/ND-CP in force. The 3,000,000–5,000,000 VND individual use penalty begins.
• 20 July 2026 — the date on the Ministry of Health draft that names nicotine pouches.
• 30 July 2026 — the government endorses Resolution 160/NQ-CP.
• October 2026 — the second National Assembly session, to which Resolution 11/2026/UBTVQH16 moved the draft. If you take one calendar entry from this article, take that one.
• 1 January 2027 — the reported start of the prohibition on new tobacco products, if the draft passes in the form reported.
• 1 July 2027 — the reported effective date of the amended law, on the same condition.

The condition on the last two entries is a real one. A draft is not a law. Text moves between draft and vote, a bill can be amended, deferred again or dropped, and a vote can go either way. This draft has already moved once: Resolution 11/2026/UBTVQH16 shifted it from the first session in April 2026 to the second in October.

What this page refuses to do

• It does not predict the outcome. We have no standing to forecast a National Assembly vote, and a commercial interest in one answer would make our forecast worthless even if we did.
• It does not give you a verdict on where pouches stand today. That question belongs to the authorities and to a qualified Vietnamese lawyer. Our standing explainer, Are nicotine pouches legal in Vietnam, sets out the dated instruments for the same reason and stops in the same place.
• It does not promise you continued supply. No shop can promise that about a product category under active legislative review, and one that tries is telling you about its marketing rather than about the law.

How to read the next headline

Coverage of this file will keep arriving, and most of it compresses several different kinds of document into the single word "ban". Three checks separate signal from noise.

• Which instrument is it? A government resolution endorsing a policy framework, a ministry draft, a National Assembly vote and a penalty decree are four different things with four different effects. Only the third changes the statute.
• Does it contain a definitions article? A framework that says "other novel tobacco products" without defining the phrase cannot yet be applied to a specific product on a specific shelf.
• Is the product named? Given how this body of law is built, the presence or absence of the words "nicotine pouches" in the operative text is the detail that matters most, and it is the first thing we check.

Our position

We sell these products to adults aged 18 and over, with age verification at checkout, and our catalogue is at the shop. Nicotine is addictive. Nicotine pouches are not a medicine or a therapy, and VinaPouches is a retailer rather than a medical provider — questions about nicotine and your body go to a doctor or pharmacist. On the law, we publish the dated text of the instruments and no opinion beyond it, because a shop's opinion on its own product's legal position is worth nothing to you.

When the October session produces something, this page gets re-dated with the new instrument rather than quietly rewritten, and the two articles linked above get the same treatment on the same day.

Adults 18+ only. Nicotine pouches contain nicotine, which is an addictive substance. Not for anyone under 18, anyone who does not already use nicotine, or anyone pregnant or breastfeeding.

General information, not legal advice. Reviewed against the published record on 2 August 2026; next review due after the National Assembly session in October 2026.