Thai authorities significantly tightened enforcement of the country’s longstanding vape ban in early 2025. In a single week — 26 February to 4 March 2025 — the Royal Thai Police recorded 690 arrests across 666 e-cigarette cases, most of them alleged sellers, and seized around 455,000 vaping items valued at roughly 41.9 million baht. Customs officers at Suvarnabhumi (BKK), Don Mueang (DMK), Phuket (HKT) and the other major Thai airports check inbound baggage for vape devices and confiscate what they find.
For visitors transiting or arriving at Thai airports — including casual layovers — this is a critical travel-safety update. The vape ban is not new (it dates to 2014), and the enforcement drive that began in 2025 has been sustained since.
What Travellers Face
Thailand’s Government Public Relations Department set out the enforcement position in its 1 March 2025 statement, and the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society published the penalty framework alongside it:
- Confiscation at the border. Vape devices, pods and e-liquid are prohibited goods under customs law; officers seize them at the airport.
- Prison terms, not just fines. Selling or supplying, possessing or buying, and importing an e-cigarette are each separate offences, and each carries a prison term as well as a fine scaled to the value of the goods. Importation without customs clearance is the most serious of the three.
- A penalty for using one, too. Using an e-cigarette in a no-smoking area is a separate ticketed offence.
- A whole-of-government campaign. Seventeen agencies — the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Interior, the Office of the Consumer Protection Board, the Royal Thai Police and others — were tasked with border control, public-awareness work and tougher law, with the OCPB running a public hotline, website and app for reports and the Royal Thai Police publishing weekly enforcement updates.
The exact figures sit with the Thai authorities and shift with the value of the goods seized, so treat any single quoted amount with caution; the practical point for a traveller is that there is no version of this where bringing a vape into Thailand goes well. Our Thailand country guide carries the standing rules.
What’s Banned
Thailand’s 2014 ban — strengthened in 2025 enforcement — covers:
- All e-cigarette devices (closed pods, open systems, sub-ohm, etc.)
- All nicotine vape liquid
- Heat-not-burn devices (IQOS, glo, Ploom)
- Importation, sale, possession, and use
There are no carve-outs for tourists, “personal use” quantities, or transit passengers. The law applies equally to inbound travellers, transit passengers, and Thai citizens.
What to Do
For anyone with a flight to or transiting through a Thai airport in 2025-2026:
- Do not bring vape devices into Thailand. Not in checked baggage, not in carry-on, not in your pocket. The Tourism Authority of Thailand’s own advice to visitors is the same: leave the device, the pods and the e-liquid at home.
- If you realise a device is in your luggage, declare it at customs rather than letting a scan find it.
- For transit-only passengers (not entering Thailand): the ban has no transit carve-out. It applies to inbound travellers, transit passengers and Thai citizens alike.
- Heat-not-burn (IQOS) devices: included in the ban. Even if you don’t use them in Thailand, possession in your carry-on is prosecutable.
Why Thailand Treats Vapes Differently
Thailand’s cigarette market runs through a state producer — the Tobacco Authority of Thailand, corporatised in 2018 from the old Thailand Tobacco Monopoly — and the country has long taken a protectionist stance on alternative nicotine products. The 2014 import ban predates similar restrictions in several neighbouring countries. The 2025 enforcement push was framed by the government around youth vaping, and was ordered after reports of e-cigarette sales around schools.
Cigarettes themselves remain fully legal in Thailand and widely available, including at the King Power duty-free shops in BKK’s international departures after immigration. The ban targets only vapes, e-cigarettes, and heat-not-burn products. Where to smoke a cigarette at each Thai airport is set out on our Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (BKK) smoking guide and the other Thai airport pages.
Bigger Picture
Thailand joins a small group of countries that completely ban vapes (alongside India, Singapore, Brazil, Iran, and a few others). For travellers transiting through any of these, the rule is consistent: don’t bring vape devices, even for personal use, even in transit.
For a country-by-country guide to vape rules at airports — including the safe transit alternatives via Doha, Dubai, and Tokyo — see Thailand, India, Singapore, the can-you-smoke-or-vape-at-airports guide, and the Ultimate Guide to Smoking at Airports.
Update (September 2026): The crackdown described here did not turn out to be a one-week campaign. Thailand’s Government Public Relations Department reported in March 2026 that the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society removed 437,473 illegal URLs between 1 October 2025 and 28 February 2026, with e-cigarette content among the categories targeted alongside gambling, alcohol advertising and cannabis sales — a continuation of the online strand of the same programme, which had already taken down more than 9,500 vape-related listings in its first year. The ban on importing, selling, possessing and using an e-cigarette is unchanged.
Sources
- Thailand Government Public Relations Department — Urgent Action to Crack Down on E-Cigarette Use and Sales (official, 1 March 2025): thailand.prd.go.th
- NBT World / Government Public Relations Department — 9,500+ Online Sources Terminated in E-Cigarette Crackdown (official, March 2025): thainews.prd.go.th
- Thailand Government Public Relations Department — Thai Government Blocks Over 437,000 Illegal Websites in Crackdown (official, 13 March 2026): thailand.prd.go.th
- Tourism Authority of Thailand — Electronic cigarettes are illegal in Thailand (official): tatnews.org
- The Nation Thailand — One-week crackdown nets 690 alleged e-cigarette sellers: nationthailand.com