Tarmizi Anuwar is the Malaysia country associate at Consumer Choice Center.
By Tarmizi Anuwar
In late 2025, Malaysia’s health minister announced that the government intended to ban vaping entirely, stating that the question was no longer whether vapes would be banned, but when. Months later, there has been no formal update. No clear timeline has been set. No communication has been directed at the estimated 1.4 million adult users who would be affected. The policy remains in limbo, creating uncertainty for consumers and the industry alike.
This uncertainty is itself a policy failure. Malaysia already has a regulatory framework for vaping. The Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024 (Act 852), which came into force on 1 October 2024, requires product registration with the Ministry of Health, caps nicotine concentration, bans online and vending machine sales, mandates graphic health warnings, and prohibits sales near educational institutions. The correct response is to strengthen this framework, not to abandon it for prohibition.
The clinical evidence supports regulation. The Cochrane living systematic review on e-cigarettes for smoking cessation, updated in 2025 with data from over 100 studies, found high-certainty evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes increase quit rates compared to nicotine replacement therapies such as patches and gums. A 2024 randomised controlled trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that adding e-cigarettes to standard cessation counselling produced significantly higher quit rates. An accompanying editorial in the same journal concluded that e-cigarettes should now be part of the clinical smoking-cessation toolkit. This is not contested fringe science. It is the current state of systematic evidence.
The strongest argument against a ban, however, comes from Malaysia’s own experience. Illegal cigarettes have dominated the Malaysian tobacco market for years, peaking at 63.8 per cent in 2020 according to industry data. The latest NielsenIQ study still puts the figure at 54.4 per cent in 2025, with the share exceeding 77 per cent in Sabah and Sarawak. If Malaysia cannot control illicit cigarettes after decades of enforcement, it is difficult to see how a vape ban would produce a different outcome. The formal vape market was valued at approximately MYR 3.48 billion in 2023. A ban would not eliminate that demand. It would transfer it to unregulated channels where more concentrated products carry no safety guarantees.
The government’s stated concern about drug-laced vape liquids, including products containing synthetic cannabinoids and other illicit substances, is legitimate, but they are also likelier to be found on the black market. Therefore, this is an argument for stronger regulation, not prohibition. Act 852 already provides for laboratory testing and product registration. The policy response should be to enforce these requirements rigorously and expand testing capacity. A ban would remove that regulatory infrastructure entirely. Every product sold after a ban would be, by definition, unregulated and untested.
International experience confirms the pattern. Singapore has banned vaping since 2018. Between January 2024 and March 2025, authorities caught 18,000 people in possession of vapes and seized over $41 million worth of products, in a country of just six million. Thailand also bans vaping and faces persistent illicit trade. In contrast, the United Kingdom has maintained a regulated market. Vaping is now on track to overtake smoking among British adults, and over half of current vapers report having quit cigarettes because of vaping. Even in the UK, however, the recent ban on disposable vapes has already produced a surge in illicit product seizures, a reminder that excessive restriction carries its own costs.
Malaysia does not need to choose between protecting public health and allowing consumer access to less harmful alternatives. A well-enforced regulatory framework achieves both. Act 852 provides the foundation. What is needed now is consistent enforcement, updated standards, and clear public communication about relative risks, not a prohibition that Malaysia’s own track record suggests it cannot enforce and that the evidence indicates will do more harm than good.
