Press conference in Q4 of 2026: the launch of the MOVE website and the publication of our commissioned research. Media only. Event details
Press conference in Q4 of 2026: the launch of the MOVE website and the publication of our commissioned research. Media only. Event details
Research
Includes numbers that work against us.
1.5 million
Estimated vape users in Malaysia.
The Global Adult Tobacco Survey Malaysia 2023 found that 5.8 per cent of adults currently use e-cigarettes. Applied to Malaysia’s adult population, that rate gives about 1.5 million people. There are also reports that cite about 1.4 million vape users. This appears to be the same 5.8 per cent but applied to a smaller population base; the South China Morning Post, 22 February 2026, names no source for its figure. They are the same estimate but applied to different population figures. We take the survey rate as reported in the World Health Organization’s 2025 global report on tobacco use trends and set out in the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction country profile for Malaysia. We have not retrieved the survey report itself. This is a 2023 measurement, not a 2026 one.
20 mg/ml
Legal nicotine ceiling in e-liquid, down from 35 mg/ml on 1 October 2025.
Packaging and Labelling Regulations 2024, P.U.(A) 261/2024.
18
Minimum legal age to be sold a vape product. The offence sits with the seller.
Act 852, in force 1 October 2024. What the Act requires.
MOVE does not argue that an industry's size is a reason to keep a harmful product on the market. Revenue is not a health argument. These figures matter for a narrower question: what happens to the people and the money when a legal market is closed.
RM354.51m
Vape excise duty collected between May 2023 (when collection started) and 11 June 2026.
New Straits Times, July 2026. Breaks down as RM80.32m in 2023, RM111.14m in 2024, RM118.93m in 2025 and RM44.11m to 11 June 2026. The 2023 figure covers eight months rather than twelve, because collection began in May. The figures come from the Ministry of Health’s written reply to Senator Robert Lau Hui Yew in the Dewan Negara, published on 29 July 2026, and were repeated in reporting up to 4 September 2026.
40 sen
Excise duty per ml of nicotine e-liquid, from 1 April 2023.
Ministry of Finance media release, 2 April 2023. The instrument is the Excise Duties (Amendment) Order 2023, made under subsection 6(1) of the Excise Act 1976, signed by the Finance Minister on 29 March 2023, gazetted on 31 March 2023 and in operation from 1 April 2023, amending the Excise Duties Order 2022. Manufacturers had until 30 April 2023 to register with Customs, so collection began in May 2023. We have matched the rate to the gazetted order itself. It is P.U.(A) 98/2023, which sets the duty on nicotine e-cigarette liquid or gel, subheading 2404.12.10 00, at RM0.40 per millilitre. We read it in the gazette copy reproduced by MAICSA. Our full working is here.
RM3.48bn
Legal vape industry revenue in 2023.
Malaysian Vape Chamber of Commerce (MVCC), as reported by Vaping Post, 7 August 2025. An industry body’s own figure. We have not verified it against a primary MVCC release.
7,500+
Retailers in the legal vape trade.
Malaysian Vape Chamber of Commerce (MVCC), via Vaping Post, 2025. An industry body’s own figure, not verified by us against a primary release.
31,500+
Jobs in the legal vape trade, many of them held by Bumiputera workers.
MVCC, via Vaping Post, 2025. Another trade body, the Malaysian E-Vaporisers and Tobacco Alternatives Association (MEVTA), put the number at about 23,000 in May 2026: more than 8,000 in manufacturing and more than 15,000 in retail. Neither figure has been traced to a primary release, so we show both.
RM600m
Annual tax revenue the trade warned would be lost if 15 ml products were hastily banned.
Focus Malaysia, 14 May 2026, reporting MEVTA. Tobacco Reporter carried the same warning as roughly US$150 million. An industry projection, not an audited figure.
7
States restricting vape sales through licensing, while federal law permits regulated sale.
Kelantan, Johor, Terengganu, Perlis, Pahang, Kedah and Perak. The register, with dates and sources.
28
Gazetted categories of place where smoking and vaping are prohibited.
Declaration of Non-Smoking Area or Place Order 2024, P.U.(A) 257/2024. The official Ministry of Health infographic lists all 28.
51,000+
Premises required to enforce the display ban at sales counters from 1 April 2025.
65%
Proportion of the front and the back of a pack that health warnings must cover.
P.U.(A) 261/2024. Widely and wrongly reported as 50%, including in trade guidance.
2 ml
Maximum cartridge or pod volume since 1 October 2026, down from 3 ml.
Packaging and Labelling Regulations 2024, P.U.(A) 261/2024. Regulation 9(3) set the earlier 3 ml limit and regulation 9(4) reduced it to 2 ml from 1 October 2026. The same schedule caps a bottle of liquid or gel at 15 ml. The full commencement table.
RM300,000
Maximum fine for a body corporate on a repeat sale-control offence, or up to 3 years' jail, or both.
Act 852. The full penalty table for retailers.
233,831
Compounds issued under Act 852 to 30 April 2026, from 683,704 premises inspected across 34,903 enforcement operations.
Ministry of Health, reported by Bernama, 1 June 2026, and by Berita RTM, 1 June 2026. The same statement records 4,226 investigation papers opened, 398 cases still before the courts, and 204 cases concluded with fines totalling RM1,189,100. The figure cuts both ways: it evidences that Act 852 is being enforced at scale, and it evidences a very large volume of non-compliance.
These belong on this page as much as ours do. Leaving them out would give the reader only one side of the argument.
RM400m
Vape-related health costs projected by 2030, cited by the Ministry of Health in support of a total ban.
Malay Mail, 7 October 2025, reporting a Regulatory Impact Analysis cited in the Dewan Rakyat, which put costs at RM244.8 million already and at RM300 million to RM400 million by 2030. There is a newer and differently defined official figure beside it: in a written reply to the Dewan Negara reported on 29 July 2026, the Ministry of Health estimated the health and economic cost burden of vape-related disease at about RM369 million a year. The two are not the same measure and one does not replace the other. We have not seen the modelling behind either.
95%
The "less harmful than smoking" estimate MOVE has quoted most often, and the figure most often used to say MOVE is unreliable.
Public Health England, 2015. Thomas Eissenberg and colleagues argue the figure is not valid, in an American Journal of Public Health editorial in 2020, reported by VCU News. Our answer to it here.
14.9%
Current e-cigarette use among 13 to 17 year olds is at 14.9%, which is an increase from 9.8% in 2017.
In the same group of 13 to 17 year olds, cigarette use fell from 13.8% to 6.2%.
The current national figure is from the National Health and Morbidity Survey Adolescent Health Survey 2022, conducted by the Ministry of Health. Peer-reviewed secondary analyses of that survey have since been published. No wave later than 2022 has been released. What is missing is an independent study.
267
Arrests recorded in the first five months of 2026 in vape cases involving suspected prohibited substances, given by the authors as "up to 267" and described as almost twice the total for the whole of 2025.
Dr Chong Karleen and Dr Mohd Hafyzuddin Md Yusuf, medical lecturers at Universiti Malaya and fellows of the Nicotine Addiction Research and Collaborating Centre, writing in Bernama on 1 September 2026. This is an opinion column, not a Bernama news report. The authors attribute the seizure and arrest figures to the Home Ministry, reported in July 2026; we cite the column as our source for them. It sits alongside a wider series they give of 718.43 kg of vape and e-cigarette products suspected of containing prohibited substances seized since 2023, across 585 arrests and 400 cases.
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