Vaping laws around the world are a patchwork of contradictions, and few examples illustrate this better than Australia and Thailand. Both countries have taken some of the strictest stances on e-cigarettes globally, yet their approaches—and the results—differ in ways that offer real lessons for policymakers, public health advocates, and vapers alike.
Why Compare Australia and Thailand?
On the surface, these two countries couldn’t be more different. Australia is a wealthy, highly regulated nation with strong public health infrastructure. Thailand is a major Southeast Asian tourist hub with a more informal enforcement culture. Yet both have arrived at similarly restrictive vaping policies, making them a useful case study in how prohibition plays out across very different social and economic contexts.
Australia's Approach to Vaping
Australia took a regulatory, medicalized approach to vaping. Rather than banning e-cigarettes outright, the government classified nicotine vaping products as prescription-only items, meaning consumers technically need a doctor’s prescription to legally purchase them.
In practice, this created a strange middle ground:
- Pharmacies were meant to be the primary legal retail channel
- Most everyday vape stores continued operating in a legal gray area
- Illegal imports and black-market sales surged
- Enforcement varied wildly between states and territories
The intended outcome was to reduce youth vaping and treat nicotine vapes strictly as smoking-cessation tools. The actual outcome has been a thriving black market that often sells products with little to no quality control—arguably making the problem harder to monitor, not easier.
The scale of this shift is striking. According to the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), Australian authorities have confiscated over 20 million illegal vapes since the start of 2024 alone, and the illicit nicotine market has continued to expand despite—or arguably because of—the crackdown. The organisation also points to a troubling link between this black market and organised crime, with enforcement efforts struggling to keep pace.
Alan Gorley of ALIVE Advocacy Australia puts it bluntly: Australia’s vaping prohibition has become a textbook case of policy driven by ideology rather than evidence, expanding the illicit trade and leaving consumers worse protected than before the ban. He further argues that the damage isn’t limited to the black market itself—it extends to public trust, as everyday Australians can see the disconnect between official messaging and what’s actually happening in their communities.
Thailand's Approach to Vaping
Thailand went further. Vaping has been illegal in the country since 2014, covering the sale, import, and in many interpretations, possession of e-cigarettes and vape devices. Penalties can be severe, including fines and even jail time, and this applies to tourists as well as residents.
Despite the strict legal stance:
- Vapes remain widely available through informal and underground markets
- Enforcement is inconsistent, often targeting tourists more visibly than locals
- A vibrant underground vaping culture persists, particularly in urban centers like Bangkok
- Confiscation and fines are common, but the ban has not eliminated demand
Thailand’s experience shows that an outright ban does not equate to elimination. It simply pushes the market underground, often with worse safety and quality outcomes for consumers. CAPHRA points to Thailand’s 11-year prohibition as proof of the same pattern seen in Australia: consumers pushed toward unregulated channels rather than away from nicotine altogether.
Asa Saligupta, of ENDS Cigarette Smoke Thailand, describes the practical fallout this way: the ban hasn’t made vaping disappear—it has made the products themselves unregulated and impossible to verify, easier for illegal sellers to exploit, and harder for smokers trying to switch to a lower-risk alternative.
What the Latest Evidence Shows
Recent commentary from regional harm-reduction advocates reinforces these patterns with hard numbers. According to the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates, Australian authorities have confiscated over twenty million illegal vaping devices since the start of 2024, and the country’s underground nicotine trade has reportedly expanded significantly, with organised crime groups increasingly involved in supply.
Alan Gorley of ALIVE Advocacy Australia argues that the country’s prohibition approach has become a case study in policy driven by ideology rather than data, pointing out that it has grown the black market and left consumers worse protected than before. He also suggests that the credibility cost may be just as damaging as the market effects themselves, noting that the public can see the disconnect between official narratives and what’s actually happening on the ground.
The Coalition’s executive coordinator, Nancy Loucas, frames this as a regional warning rather than an isolated case, arguing that banning nicotine products doesn’t stop people from using them, but instead transfers control to illegal operators while stripping away consumer safeguards.
Thai advocate Asa Saligupta of ENDs Cigarette Smoke Thailand points to similar outcomes after more than a decade of prohibition in Thailand, explaining that the ban has not stopped vaping but has made products unsafe, unregulated, and harder to track, while making it more difficult for smokers to transition to lower-risk alternatives.
Notably, the Coalition isn’t arguing against regulation altogether. The group says it backs strict age verification, product safety standards, and enforcement against illegal sellers—but maintains that achieving those goals requires legal, regulated access and honest risk communication, not blanket prohibition.
Key Lessons From Both Countries
1. Prohibition Rarely Eliminates Demand
Whether through Australia’s prescription model or Thailand’s outright ban, neither approach has meaningfully reduced the number of people vaping. Instead, both have driven significant portions of the market underground.
2. Black Markets Fill the Gap
When legal access becomes difficult or impossible, black markets step in. Unregulated products carry more risk because they bypass safety testing, ingredient transparency, and quality control standards that legal markets would otherwise enforce.
3. Enforcement Is Costly and Inconsistent
Both countries have struggled with enforcement. Australia’s state-by-state inconsistency and Thailand’s selective targeting of tourists highlight how difficult it is to police a product that is relatively easy to conceal and transport.
4. Regulation May Outperform Prohibition
Countries that have taken a regulated, harm-reduction approach—setting age limits, product standards, and marketing restrictions rather than outright bans—have generally seen better compliance and fewer unintended consequences. The UK, for example, treats vaping as a harm-reduction tool for smokers rather than a banned substance, with notably different market outcomes.
CAPHRA, the regional advocacy coalition cited throughout this analysis, frames its position this way: it supports strict age limits, product standards, and enforcement against illegal sellers, but argues those goals are best achieved through regulated legal access, accurate risk communication, and proportionate policy rather than blanket prohibition. Nancy Loucas, the Coalition’s Executive Coordinator, warns that the Australia and Thailand experiences should serve as a cautionary signal for the wider Asia Pacific region: prohibition doesn’t end nicotine use, it hands the market to criminal operators, weakens consumer protections, and leaves adults with fewer legal pathways away from smoking.
5. Policy Without Public Buy-In Struggles to Work
Both Australia and Thailand show that policies perceived as overly restrictive or impractical tend to lose public compliance over time. Sustainable regulation typically requires a balance between public health goals and realistic consumer behavior.
What Other Countries Can Take Away
For policymakers watching Australia and Thailand, the takeaway isn’t necessarily “prohibition is bad” or “regulation is good” in absolute terms—it’s that policy design matters enormously. A few practical considerations stand out:
- Clear, consistent enforcement is more effective than strict laws applied unevenly
- Legal access channels reduce reliance on black markets
- Public health messaging works better alongside accessible legal alternatives, not in place of them
- Tourist-specific enforcement (as seen in Thailand) creates confusion and inconsistent outcomes
Final Thoughts
Australia and Thailand represent two different prohibition strategies—one medicalized and bureaucratic, the other an outright criminal ban—yet both have run into similar challenges: persistent demand, thriving black markets, and inconsistent enforcement. As more countries weigh how to regulate vaping, these two case studies offer a clear warning: prohibition alone is rarely a complete solution, and the gap between policy intent and real-world outcome can be significant.
Understanding these lessons may help other nations craft vaping policies that are not just strict, but actually effective.