Bangladesh Bans Vapes as BAT Increases Cigarette Production

A ban on all vape imports took effect this week in Bangladesh. With no domestic vaping product manufacturers, the import prohibition is essentially an outright vape ban.

“It is necessary to take urgent measures to ban these products and ensure the public health and safety of future generations,” the Health Department of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare announced in December.

The ban was proposed at a cabinet meeting in December by the country’s Health Services Division, according to BD News. The final rule was announced Jan. 7 by the Ministry of Commerce.

Several vape import trade groups asked the government in December to reconsider the ban, according to the United News of Bangladesh (UNB).

The Bangladesh government has threatened to ban vapes at least since 2021, when health officials announced their intention to prohibit e-cigarettes at a joint event with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Bangladesh is the world’s eighth largest cigarette market, according to Tobacco Insider, which reported in December that British American Tobacco (BAT)—which has a 70 percent market share in the country—was expanding its production facilities there. The announcement came around the same time the government said it would ban vapes.

As in Bangladesh’s next-door neighbor India, both smoking and the use of toxic oral products that contain tobacco are widespread, with 31.2 percent of the adult population—including 48.9 percent of men—using one or both kinds of products, according to Global Action to End Smoking. 

Together these products kill over 130,000 people a year in Bangladesh. The death toll could eventually be greatly reduced if low-risk smokeless tobacco and nicotine products—like snus, nicotine pouches and vapes—were regulated and encouraged.

Bangladesh, which lies between India and Myanmar, is the eighth most-populous country in the world, with about 175 million residents. Formerly known as East Pakistan, Bangladesh became a sovereign country in 1971.