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Vietnam Bans E-Cigarettes & Heated Tobacco: 2026 Travel Guide & Fines

Vinapouches TeamΒ·
Vietnam Bans E-Cigarettes & Heated Tobacco: 2026 Travel Guide & Fines

Vietnam prohibits e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. Resolution 173/2024/QH15, passed by the National Assembly on 30 November 2024, bans the production, trade, import, storage, transport and use of both categories from 1 January 2025. Decree 371/2025/ND-CP, in force since 31 December 2025, set the administrative fine for using them at 3,000,000–5,000,000 VND for an individual — roughly USD 115–190 at the late-July 2026 rate of about 26,300 VND to the dollar — with the products liable to confiscation and destruction.

What follows summarises the published text of those instruments as it stood on 29 July 2026. It is not legal advice, it does not predict how any officer or court will act in your case, and regulation of nicotine products in Vietnam is actively changing. Read the current text of the law or ask a qualified Vietnamese lawyer before relying on any of it.

What Resolution 173/2024/QH15 actually says

Resolution 173/2024/QH15 is a National Assembly resolution on the work of the health, justice and interior sectors, adopted at the 8th session on 30 November 2024. Its tobacco clause is short and its scope is drawn tightly around two named product categories.

The resolution directs that, from 2025, Vietnam prohibits the production, trade, import, storage, transport and use of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, together with other gases and substances that are harmful to health. It also directs the Government and relevant ministries to strengthen enforcement and public communication about the harms of those products.

Two things follow from the way it is drafted, and both matter to a visitor:

  • Use is inside the prohibition, not just supply. Many countries ban the sale of a product and leave personal use alone. Vietnam did not. The word for use sits in the same list as production and import.
  • The list is a list of two categories. The resolution names e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. It does not enumerate oral nicotine pouches, snuff, chewing tobacco or nicotine gum.

The fines, and the decree they come from

Resolution 173 states the prohibition. It does not set penalties. Those arrived a year later, in Decree 371/2025/ND-CP, which amended Decree 117/2020/ND-CP on administrative penalties in the health sector and inserted a new Article 26a. It took effect on 31 December 2025.

  • Using an e-cigarette or heated tobacco product: 3,000,000–5,000,000 VND for an individual (about USD 115–190).
  • Allowing or harbouring others' use at premises you own or manage: 5,000,000–10,000,000 VND (about USD 190–380). This one reaches bar owners, hostel managers and landlords, not just users.
  • Organisations pay double the individual figure for the same conduct.
  • Confiscation and destruction of the device and consumables is an additional measure, applied on top of the fine rather than instead of it.
  • Vietnamese reporting notes a separate, much lower band for minors aged 16 to under 18 using tobacco products, replacing what had previously been a warning.

Commercial-scale conduct sits on an entirely different and far heavier scale. Because e-cigarettes and heated tobacco became prohibited goods on 1 January 2025, selling, importing, transporting or storing them falls under Decree 98/2020/ND-CP on administrative penalties in commercial activity — the decree amended by Decree 24/2025/ND-CP, signed 21 February 2025. Vietnamese legal compilations put the prohibited-goods bands there in the range of 1,000,000 to 100,000,000 VND depending on the value of the consignment, rising further for manufacture, with operating in a prohibited business line penalised separately again. Serious cases can be handled criminally rather than administratively.

If you are flying into Vietnam with a vape

Import is one of the six verbs in Resolution 173, and nothing in the published text carves out a personal-use allowance for e-cigarettes or heated tobacco devices the way duty-free rules carve out a carton of cigarettes. There is no published quantity below which the category stops being prohibited.

The straightforward conclusion is practical rather than legal: leave the device and the pods at home. A vape you did not bring cannot be seized, cannot be fined and cannot turn a holiday into an afternoon at a district administrative office. If you are already carrying one and are asked at the border, answer honestly — declaring a prohibited item and surrendering it is an administrative matter, whereas concealing it is a different and worse one. We will not tell you how to get one past an inspection, and no article that does is worth trusting.

The same reasoning applies to the return leg: rules are national, they are not reciprocal, and they change.

Ordinary cigarettes are treated differently

Conventional cigarettes are not covered by Resolution 173. They remain governed by the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms No. 09/2012/QH13, which is a control regime rather than a prohibition: cigarettes are sold legally, taxed, and restricted as to where they may be smoked.

Under Decree 117/2020/ND-CP, smoking in a place where smoking is prohibited draws a fine of 200,000–500,000 VND (about USD 8–19). The prohibited places include the entire indoor and outdoor grounds of health facilities and of schools below university level, and areas designated for childcare and children's play. In other public places and workplaces the prohibition covers indoor areas, with designated smoking rooms permitted in airport departure areas, bars, karaoke venues, discos, hotels and guesthouses.

Enforcement of the smoking rules is publicly criticised inside Vietnam as inconsistent. That is an observation about practice, not permission.

Where nicotine pouches sit in the current text

Oral nicotine pouches — the small white pouches, widely called snus in Vietnam, that are placed under the upper lip and contain no tobacco leaf, no heating element and no aerosol — are not named in Resolution 173/2024/QH15. They are also not named in the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms of 2012, which was written before the product existed in this market.

That is a statement about what two documents contain. It is deliberately not a statement that pouches are permitted, and anyone telling you flatly that they are, or that they are not, is going past what the published texts support.

A change is scheduled. On 27 July 2026 Vietnamese media reported Resolution 11/2026/UBTVQH16, signed by National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man, adjusting the 2026 legislative programme and moving the draft Law amending the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms from the first session in April 2026 to the second session in October 2026. The Ministry of Health's draft — the version dated 20 July 2026 — names tui ngam nicotine (nicotine pouches) among "other new tobacco products" alongside inhalable nicotine products and shisha, and would prohibit their manufacture, trade, storage, transport, transit, harbouring and use. Reporting on the draft puts the law's effective date at 1 July 2027, with the prohibition on new tobacco products referred to from 1 January 2027.

As of 29 July 2026 that draft is a draft. It has not been voted on and it is not in force. If it passes in the form reported, the position described in this article changes, and this page will be re-dated within seven days of the published text changing.

Practical points for visitors

  • Nicotine products of every kind are for adults aged 18 and over.
  • Any product containing nicotine contains an addictive substance. Nothing here is a health claim or a recommendation to use nicotine.
  • House rules are not law. A hotel, airline or restaurant can prohibit something the state has not, and usually will if asked.
  • Our FAQ keeps a dated answer on Vietnamese law, and our shipping page sets out delivery times inside Vietnam. VinaPouches ships domestically only and cannot advise on any other country's rules.

Sources

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.

Last checked: 2026-07-29

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