Vietnam to Regulate Vape, H-n-B as Tobacco Products

Several government agencies have confirmed that Vietnam will regulate e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products (heat-not-burn) the same as traditional tobacco products under the country’s Law on Prevention and Control of Harmful Effects of Tobacco, which has been in effect since 2012.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has been assigned the task of presiding and coordinating with ministries and ministerial-level agencies to develop appropriate regulations to manage these products.

To effectively manage tobacco products, the parties are analyzing the Law on Prevention and Control of Harmful Effects of Tobacco to evaluate its correlation with each type of product, specifically electronic and heated cigarettes, according to media reports.

The law’s Article 2.1 states: “Tobacco is a product produced from all or part of tobacco ingredients, processed in the form of cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, pipe tobacco or other forms.”

Article 2.3 adds: “Tobacco raw materials are tobacco leaves in loose form, sheets that have been pre-processed and separated from stems, tobacco fibers, tobacco stems and other substitute materials used to produce cigarettes.”

Thus, the law stipulates that only the ingredients of a product should be considered to determine it as a “cigarette,” not the production process or usage of different types of products, whether cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, or other forms such as heated tobacco.

Thus, heated tobacco and e-cigarettes fall under the scope of the Law on Prevention and Control of Harmful Effects of Tobacco, similar to cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco. Essentially, if it contains nicotine it is a tobacco product.

In a seminar on new types of cigarettes, Le Dai Hai, vice director of civil and economic law department (Ministry of Justice) said: “For heated tobacco, we confirmed that it is a tobacco product because it is made from tobacco ingredients, then inserted into the device for smoking.”