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The words, defined.

This argument is conducted in three vocabularies at once: legal, medical and industry. The terms below are defined in plain words for easy reading.

Last reviewed 23 October 2026.

Products and how they work

E-cigarette, or vape: A battery-powered device that heats a liquid into an inhalable aerosol. Nothing is burned. Malaysian law treats it in the same statute as tobacco.
E-liquid: The liquid the device heats. Typically propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine, flavouring, and in most cases nicotine. Regulated in Malaysia by strength, labelling and volume.
Nicotine: The addictive compound found in tobacco and in most e-liquid. It is what makes both products habit-forming. The serious disease burden from smoking comes mainly from burning tobacco rather than from nicotine itself, which is the premise the harm reduction argument rests on.
mg per ml: Milligrams of nicotine in each millilitre of liquid, the standard measure of strength. Malaysian law caps it at 20 mg per ml. The Packaging and Labelling Regulations 2024 set 35 mg per ml at regulation 9(1) and reduced it to 20 mg per ml from 1 October 2025 at regulation 9(2).
Open system and closed system: An open system is refilled by the user from a bottle. A closed system uses a sealed pre-filled cartridge or pod that is replaced rather than refilled. The proposed staged ban was reported as beginning with open systems.
Pod, or cartridge: The sealed container of liquid used in a closed system. Malaysian law caps the volume at 2 ml under regulation 9(4) of the Packaging and Labelling Regulations 2024, in force since 1 October 2026. Before that the cap was 3 ml, under regulation 9(3). A bottle of liquid or gel is separately capped at 15 ml.
Tar: The sticky residue left when tobacco is burned, and the carrier of many of the carcinogens in cigarette smoke. Vaping produces no tar because it burns nothing, which is the clearest physical difference between the two products.
Heated tobacco: A separate category. It heats real tobacco leaf without burning it. Vape contains no tobacco at all. The two are routinely confused in public argument, including by people making policy about them. Because it contains tobacco it sits inside Act 852 as a tobacco product, and the regulations give “heated product” its own defined category with its own packaging rules.
Snus: Oral tobacco placed under the lip rather than inhaled. Because it contains tobacco it is inside Act 852, as smokeless tobacco, defined in the packaging regulations as a tobacco product consumed by means other than smoking.
Nicotine pouches: Tobacco-free nicotine placed under the lip. Nothing is heated, burned or smoked, so they fall outside Act 852. The Health Ministry said in June 2026 that they are Group C poisons under the Poisons Act 1952, which restricts their sale to authorised persons such as licensed pharmacists or registered medical practitioners. It is the same classification problem this website documents for nicotine e-liquid, in a second product.
Counterfeit product: A copy of a registered brand’s cartridge or bottle, made by someone else and sold as the original. It happens in Malaysia and it happens because the copy is cheaper. A counterfeit has, by definition, no traceable manufacturer.
Drug-laced liquid: E-liquid adulterated with an illicit substance, most often tetrahydrocannabinol. Linked to 402 synthetic-drug vape cases recorded by police up to April 2026, stated by the Health Minister in June 2026, and to 76 National Poison Centre poisoning cases between 2020 and 2024. It is a criminal supply problem rather than a product problem.
Traceability: The ability to follow a bottle back to the factory that filled it. MOVE has proposed a scannable code on every bottle resolving to the manufacturer and the ingredients. It has been put to the Ministry of Health. The proposal was received well and has not been implemented.

Health and cessation

Harm reduction: Cutting the damage a risky behaviour causes without requiring the person to stop first. Applied to smoking, it means offering an adult who smokes a less harmful way of taking nicotine, on the reasoning that fewer people are hurt that way than if the only option offered is quitting outright.; It is a contested principle. Critics argue it entrenches nicotine use rather than ending it. The disagreement is about goals rather than facts.
THR, tobacco harm reduction: The specific application of harm reduction to tobacco.
NRT, nicotine replacement therapy: The licensed medical products for stopping smoking: gums, patches, lozenges and inhalators. NRT is the comparator in the cessation research, because the question researchers ask is whether e-cigarettes work better or worse than the thing already approved.
Cessation: Stopping smoking. Worth separating from switching, which is moving from one nicotine product to another. Most of the evidence MOVE cites is about cessation among people who already smoke, and it says nothing about people who never smoked before.
Relapse: Returning to smoking after stopping.
EVALI: E-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury. A cluster of severe lung injuries reported in the United States from 2019. Of the hospitalised patients whose substance use was recorded, 82 per cent had used tetrahydrocannabinol products; vitamin E acetate, a thickener used in illicit tetrahydrocannabinol liquid, was found in 48 of 51 lung-fluid samples and is the most probable toxicant. The Centers for Disease Control could not rule out other chemicals.
“Popcorn lung”: The popular name for bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and serious lung condition associated with inhaling diacetyl, a flavouring compound once used in microwave popcorn factories. It appears constantly in vaping argument. Diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione are banned from e-liquids in the United Kingdom and the European Union. One case has been reported in a person who vaped: a Canadian youth in 2019 who used both flavoured liquid and tetrahydrocannabinol. The doctors described the link as suggested rather than established, and a 2026 review in the Journal of Thoracic Disease calls it the first case report of vaping-related bronchiolitis obliterans. What has not been shown is that diacetyl in e-liquid caused it.
The “95% less harmful” figure: An estimate from a 2015 Public Health England review that vaping is around 95% less harmful than smoking. It is the most quoted number in this debate and it is contested, because it came from an expert elicitation exercise rather than from outcome data. Where it appears on this website it is attributed, dated and shown with the criticism. Our answer to the criticism.

Legal and regulatory

Act 852: The Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024. Malaysia’s governing statute for tobacco and vape. Royal assent 24 January 2024, published in the Gazette on 2 February 2024, in force 1 October 2024. Explained in full here.
Gazette, and P.U.(A): The Federal Gazette is the official publication in which laws and subsidiary legislation are printed. P.U.(A) is the series designation for subsidiary legislation of general application. A P.U.(A) number, such as 261/2024, identifies a specific instrument, and citing one is how you point at the exact rule rather than at a summary of it.
Poisons List: A schedule of controlled substances under separate poisons legislation. Nicotine in liquid and gel form was exempted from it in 2023, which allowed nicotine e-liquid to be sold as a consumer product. On 15 May 2026 the Kuala Lumpur High Court declared that exemption irrational, and declared it was inserted without proper consultation with the Poisons Board and so ultra vires section 6 of the Poisons Act 1952. The court made declarations only: the 2023 order was not quashed and has not been repealed. The Government’s appeal was withdrawn on 18 August 2026, letting the ruling stand. What that means for retail sale had not been clarified as at 23 October 2026. The current position.
Group C poison: A classification under the poisons legislation that restricts supply to licensed pharmacists and registered medical practitioners. The Government discontinued its appeal on 18 August 2026, so the High Court’s declarations stand. The court did not quash the 2023 order, and whether nicotine e-liquid is now a Group C poison is contested. On the reading published by CodeBlue on 4 September 2026, only tobacco and registered nicotine patch or gum for smoking cessation remain exempt from the Poisons List, which would place nicotine e-liquid in Group C. The Ministry of Health had not clarified the position for retail sale as at 23 October 2026.
Excise duty: A tax on a specific good, charged at production or import rather than at sale. Nicotine e-liquid has carried excise duty in Malaysia since 1 April 2023, at 40 sen per ml, under the Excise Duties (Amendment) Order 2023, gazetted 31 March 2023. Collection began the following month, after a registration window for manufacturers that closed on 30 April 2023. Vape excise itself is older: it was first imposed on 1 January 2021 on non-nicotine liquid and on devices. The full record.
Compound: A fine offered as an alternative to prosecution, which an offender can pay to settle the matter. Only four offences under Act 852 can be compounded: a minor purchasing a smoking product, smoking in a declared no-smoking place, a minor using a tobacco or substitute product, and the duty a proprietor or occupier owes at a no-smoking place. Every retailer and manufacturer offence must go to court. A compound may not exceed half the maximum fine and requires the written consent of the Public Prosecutor. By 30 April 2026 the Ministry of Health had issued 233,831 compounds and opened 4,226 investigation papers.
Display ban: The prohibition on showing vape and tobacco products at the point of sale. Regulation 6(1) of the Control of Sale Regulations 2024 bars display except at specialised stores, and regulation 6(2) provides that even there the products must not be conspicuous from outside. It came into force with the Act on 1 October 2024, with enforcement of the sale-control rules beginning on 1 April 2025 and packaging and labelling phased in by 1 October 2025.
TAPS ban: Tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. Prohibited under Act 852, which is why this website carries no product, no brand, no price and no advertising.
Specialist store: A shop that sells vape products and essentially nothing else.
GEG, generational end game: A proposal to bar everyone born on or after a set date, in Malaysia’s case 1 January 2007, from buying tobacco or vape for their entire life. It was in the Control of Tobacco Product and Smoking Bill 2022, tabled on 27 July 2022, and MOVE filed a memorandum of objection at Parliament that year. The Bill was referred unanimously to a special select committee on 2 August 2022, at second reading, after two days of debate, and was never brought back. The generational clause returned in the Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Bill 2023, tabled for first reading on 12 June 2023 (MalaysiaNow, 12 June 2023). On 18 November 2023 the Attorney-General stated that the generational provisions could be challenged as contrary to Article 8 of the Federal Constitution, the equality provision, because they would treat people born before and after 1 January 2007 differently. The clause was dropped from the revised bill tabled on 28 November 2023 (The Vibes, 28 November 2023), which was passed on 30 November 2023 and became Act 852.
Tobacco endgame: The policy goal of ending tobacco use in a population altogether, rather than reducing its harms. It is the goal MOVE’s critics hold and MOVE does not. The disagreement, set out.

Evidence and research

These terms decide how much weight a source carries. They are worth knowing before anyone quotes a study at you, including us.

Systematic review: A study of studies. Researchers define a question, search for every study that addresses it, appraise their quality against set criteria, and summarise what the body of evidence shows. It sits above any individual study, because it is harder to cherry-pick.
Meta-analysis: Statistically pooling the results of multiple studies to produce a single combined estimate. Often done as part of a systematic review.
Living review: A systematic review that is updated continuously as new evidence appears, rather than published once and left. The Cochrane review on e-cigarettes for smoking cessation is one, which is why it carries a version number. Quoting an old version of a living review is a common and avoidable error.
Randomised controlled trial: A study in which participants are assigned by chance to one treatment or another, so that differences in outcome can be attributed to the treatment rather than to who chose it. The strongest single study design for a question about whether something works.
Certainty of evidence: A graded judgement of how much confidence to place in a finding, from very low to high. When the Cochrane review reports high-certainty evidence, it is saying further research is unlikely to change the conclusion. It is not saying the matter is closed for all time.
Expert elicitation: A method in which a panel of experts is asked to estimate something the data cannot yet answer, and their judgements are combined. It is a legitimate technique for decisions that cannot wait.
Gateway effect: The claim that using one product leads a person to a more harmful one, in this argument that vaping leads young people to smoking.
Conflict of interest: A stake in the outcome of a piece of research. It applies to industry funding, to pharmaceutical funding, to advocacy funding and to career incentives on all sides. It does not automatically make a finding wrong, but it does mean the finding should be read knowing about it.

Organisations and acronyms

MOH: Ministry of Health Malaysia. Owns Act 852 and its enforcement, runs product registration, and is the driver of the ban proposal.
NPRA: National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency, the Ministry of Health body that registers pharmaceutical products. Registration of vape products under Act 852 is a separate regime: an application goes to the Director-General of Health under the Registration Regulations 2024, P.U.(A) 262/2024, at a fee of RM5,000 for each variant, and must be accompanied by a laboratory analysis report from an approved laboratory. The two are routinely confused.
MOF: Ministry of Finance. Sets excise duty, alongside the Royal Malaysian Customs Department which collects it.
MOVE: Malaysian Organization of Vape Entity. Officially Pertubuhan Entiti Vape Malaysia. A non-profit consumer body for Malaysian adults who vape, and the publisher of this website. Who we are.
MVCC, MRECA, MEVTA: Malaysian trade bodies representing the vape chamber of commerce, retailers, and vaporiser and tobacco alternative businesses respectively. They represent businesses. MOVE represents consumers.
CAPHRA: Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates. A regional consumer-side alliance.
SEATCA: Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance. A regional tobacco-control body that classifies harm reduction advocacy as industry-aligned, and lists MOVE in its industry monitor. Our answer.
Galen Centre and CodeBlue: A Malaysian health policy think tank and its publication. Both support prohibition. CodeBlue’s reporting on the Poisons List case is the most detailed available and we cite it throughout our law pages.
FCTC: The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the international treaty that shapes tobacco policy in most countries, Malaysia included. Its parties meet at a Conference of the Parties, referred to as COP.
#VapersBeHeard: A regional consumers’ movement MOVE co-founded in September 2018 with groups from the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

Something missing?

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MOVE, Malaysian Organization of Vape Entity, "Glossary", last reviewed 23 October 2026, move-malaysia.org/glossary.

Other helpful explainers you can find on our site

Act 852, explained

Vaping, explained

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