No. Vietnam has banned e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products since 2025, and the ban covers bringing them in, carrying them and using them, not only selling them. The National Assembly set it in Resolution 173/2024/QH15 on 30 November 2024, and there is no exception for tourists or for personal use. Since 15 May 2026, using a vape or a heated tobacco device has been fined 3 to 5 million VND (about $115 to $195) under Decree 90/2026/ND-CP, and the device must be destroyed. Leave it at home.
This page sets out what the law bans, what it actually fines, what customs does at the airport and what is still unclear, especially for transit passengers. It reports what the sources say and is not legal advice; where the sources stop, I say so. For the rest of the arrival process, see the first 24 hours in Vietnam guide and the visa and immigration atlas. Dollar conversions use about 25,600 VND to the dollar, Vietcombank's rate on 30 October 2026.
What does Vietnam's ban cover?
The ban sits in a resolution on the National Assembly's question time at its eighth session. In its health section, the Assembly agreed to ban the production, trading, import, keeping, transport and use of e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, and gases and addictive substances harmful to human health "from 2025", as the Health Ministry quotes it in its June 2026 bill submission. The ministry's text uses the word chứa chấp, which means keeping or harbouring; English reports such as Tuoi Tre News translated the list with "storage". Either way, possession sits inside the ban's wording.
When it started. The resolution says "from 2025". Customs was told to stop processing imports and exports of these products from 1 January 2025 in Official Letter 17/TCHQ-GSQL, Thanh Tra reported, and the Ha Tinh provincial government portal gives 14 January 2025 as the date the resolution itself took effect.
What counts. Decree 371/2025/ND-CP added legal definitions at the end of 2025, as Nhan Dan reported. An e-cigarette is an electronic device with a liquid component and its liquid, whether or not the liquid contains nicotine. A heated tobacco product is an electronic device used with specially processed tobacco, which covers IQOS-style sticks. Disposables, pod systems and refillable mods all fall under the first definition.
Where the law is heading. The 2025 Investment Law lists trading in e-cigarettes and heated tobacco as a prohibited business, and on 21 October 2026 the Health Minister presented a bill to write the ban into the Law on Prevention of Tobacco Harms, Cong Ly reported. It had not been passed when I checked on 1 November 2026.
What is banned, and what is actually fined?
In Vietnamese law, banned and fined are not the same thing. The resolution says what is prohibited; separate government decrees set the penalties, and they do not put a price on every banned act. This is the position as of October 2026:
| What you do | Banned? | Penalty | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Use a vape or heated tobacco device, anywhere | Yes | 3-5 million VND, device destroyed | Decree 90/2026, Art. 26(1) |
| Let others vape at a place you own or manage | Yes | 5-10 million VND; 10-20 million VND for a business | Decree 90/2026, Art. 26(2) and Art. 4(5) |
| Bring one into Vietnam | Yes | Taken by customs; large amounts fined (see below) | Resolution 173; customs cases |
| Carry or keep one | Covered by the ban's wording | No separate fine for personal possession in Decree 90/2026 | Resolution 173 |
| Sell or trade them | Yes | 1-100 million VND by value; prison in large cases | Decree 98/2020, Art. 8; Penal Code, Arts. 190-191 |
| Smoke a cigarette where smoking is banned | Cigarettes are legal | 200,000-500,000 VND | Decree 90/2026, Art. 24(1) |
The fine for users is new. When the ban began in January 2025, Vietnamese law had no penalty for using an e-cigarette at all, the Ha Tinh portal noted at the time. Decree 371/2025/ND-CP added the 3 to 5 million VND fine from 31 December 2025, VnExpress International reported. Decree 90/2026/ND-CP, signed on 30 March 2026, replaced the whole health penalties decree from 15 May 2026 and kept the same amounts in its Article 26, which I read in the decree's full text published by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Justice. Article 2 applies it to foreign individuals as well as Vietnamese ones.
Two details are worth knowing. First, the vaping fine is at least six times the fine for smoking an ordinary cigarette in a no-smoking area. Second, the trading fines come from a separate commercial decree, Decree 98/2020/ND-CP, which fines trading, transporting and storing banned goods from 1 million VND for goods worth under 3 million VND, with Articles 190 and 191 of the Penal Code for serious cases, according to the Ha Tinh portal and LuatVietnam. I found no case of those trading fines being applied to a tourist's own device.
What happens at the airport?
Customs treats e-cigarettes as goods it may not clear, and its officers can fine users directly. Here is what the record shows:
- No clearance since 1 January 2025. Official Letter 17/TCHQ-GSQL told customs offices to stop processing these products as imports or exports.
- Devices are taken. In April 2025 Pham Ngoc Dong, director of the customs anti-smuggling investigation department, told Bao Dau Tu that customs and police would seize such products and deal with them under the rules.
- Officers at the border can fine. Article 112 of Decree 90/2026 gives customs officers, border guards and police the power to impose the Article 26 fine for use.
- Bulk is fined heavily. In a case reported in October 2025, customs at Tan Son Nhat airport fined two passengers 32.56 million VND each and confiscated all the goods. One had brought in e-cigarettes worth more than 93 million VND without declaring them; the other was carrying more than 92 million VND worth, Thuong Hieu va Cong Luan reported.
What I could not find is a published rule or case for a single device in a tourist's bag. The customs statement points to the device being taken; beyond that, I cannot tell you what an officer will do. The simplest protection is not to pack one, alongside the other things the Vietnam packing list tells you to leave at home. Customs is otherwise rarely a hurdle for leisure travellers, as the airport fast-track guide explains, and a vape is one of the few things that can change that, like the drones in the photography and drone rules guide.
Your airline may stop you first. Vietnam Airlines' baggage rules say it does not accept e-cigarettes, heated tobacco devices, electronic cigars or pipes under any circumstances. Vietjet's baggage service page says the same devices will be refused at check-in, and that passengers must arrange storage or disposal before boarding. Other airlines set their own rules.
Foreign governments warn their travellers in plain terms. Canada's travel advice, updated on 19 October 2026, says it is illegal to bring, sell, use or distribute vaping products in Vietnam. The British government is shorter still:
"You cannot buy vapes in Vietnam or bring them into the country." (UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, United Kingdom, checked October 2026)
What about transit passengers?
It depends on whether you enter Vietnam. If your connection is domestic, for example an international flight into Ho Chi Minh City and then on to Phu Quoc or Da Nang, you clear immigration and customs at the first airport, and everything above applies.
Airside international transit, where you never pass immigration, is less clear. Resolution 173 lists import, transport and use but does not mention transit. The bill presented on 21 October 2026 aims to close that gap. The Health Ministry's June 2026 draft added storage and transit to the banned acts for e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and other new tobacco products, and Lawyers of Vietnam magazine reported on 21 October that the ministry's proposal would also ban nicotine pouches and shisha, transit included. The ministry's draft aimed for a vote at the National Assembly session that opened in October 2026.
In practice, the airline question often settles it. If either leg is on Vietnam Airlines or Vietjet, the device will not be carried. I found no official guidance written for airside transit passengers, so I would not travel through Vietnam with one.
How is the ban enforced in 2025 and 2026?
Enforcement has mostly targeted sellers and has only recently reached users. The Health Ministry's June 2026 submission gives the police figures: from 2020 to the first quarter of 2024, police handled 728 cases involving 883 people linked to e-cigarettes and heated tobacco; since the start of 2025, the submission says, they detected 5 cases and prosecuted 2 of them, with 17 defendants, for producing and trading banned goods. User fines have existed only since 31 December 2025.
The ban has not made the products disappear. In April 2026, Voice of Vietnam's VOV2 reported that use was still rising and that devices were sold openly on social media and e-commerce platforms, while a WHO Vietnam tobacco control expert said the liquids were still not tightly controlled. That is a reason for caution, not comfort: a ban that is unevenly enforced still carries the full fine for the person who is caught.
The health figure the ministry cites comes from Bach Mai Hospital's Poison Control Centre, which treated 120 emergency cases linked to e-cigarettes or heated tobacco in the 22 months before the ban, about 5 or 6 a month, and 1 or 2 a month since.
If you vape: what to do instead
Plan the trip as a break, and pack accordingly:
- Leave devices, pods and liquids at home, nicotine-free ones included.
- Do not count on your hotel. The harbouring fine gives hotels, bars and homestays a direct reason to stop you, and a business pays 10 to 20 million VND.
- Ordinary cigarettes are legal for adults, but smoking where it is banned is fined, so look for the signs.
- Treat nicotine pouches as uncertain. They are not named in Resolution 173 or Decree 90/2026, but the Health Ministry's proposal for the bill before the National Assembly would ban them.
- Pack medicines properly. If you are bringing prescription medicines, the Vietnam pharmacies guide explains what to bring from home and how to carry it.
Limitations
I worked from the Health Ministry's quotation of Resolution 173 and from Vietnamese news and legal summaries, not from the official gazette text of the resolution, and translations of its key verb differ. I did read the full text of Decree 90/2026/ND-CP. Workaround: treat any e-cigarette or heated tobacco device as banned in every form, which is how every source I found reads it.
I found no published rule or case for what happens to a tourist with one personal device at the airport, beyond the customs statement that devices are seized, and no official guidance for airside transit passengers. Workaround: do not pack one, and ask your airline about its own rules if you connect through Vietnam.
The bill to write the ban into the tobacco law was still before the National Assembly on 1 November 2026, and it would change the position on transit and nicotine pouches. Workaround: check news from VnExpress or Tuoi Tre in the weeks before you fly, or ask the Vietnamese embassy in your country.
Enforcement figures come from the Health Ministry's own submission and are preliminary. Workaround: judge the risk by the fine on paper, not by how often it is applied.