VAPE products with certain flavors that minors favor did not pass the government‘s licensing process, and are therefore illegal, a Department of Trade and Industry official said on Monday.
“Products [with] flavor descriptors like food, dessert, [and] cartoon characters did not pass through the DTI. These are 100-percent smuggled,” Trade Assistant Secretary Marcus Valdez II told a hearing at the Senate Committee on Health and Demography.
The panel discussed measures to amend Republic Act 11900 or the Vaporized Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Products Regulation Law.
The law regulates the “importation, sale, packaging, distribution, use and communication of vaporized nicotine and non-nicotine products and novel tobacco products,” such as electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products.
Under the law, only plain tobacco and plain menthol flavors are allowed in vape products.
It also prohibits the sale of these products to persons below 18 years old, and restricts advertising, marketing and flavor descriptors that may appeal to minors.
“In 2023, we confiscated illegal vape products worth P5.4 million, and in 2024 [the amount] rose to P32 million,” Valdez said, adding that last year, it ballooned to P519 million.
In the first three months of this year, DTI seized P10 million worth of illegal vape products, including P3.6 million of these items in a joint enforcement operation with the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group on March 12 against retailers and distribution hubs in Metro Manila and Region 4A (Calabarzon).
Authorities focused on establishments suspected of selling vape products that do not comply with government regulations.
However, some of these establishments have devised ways of flouting the law by selling their products secretly — only to those personally known to them, Valdez said.
DTI has also filed charges against online platforms Meta, Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok for advertising sellers of illegal vape products, Valdez said.
“If these platforms do not cooperate in preventing the sale of substandard or unlicensed products, we may have to close them down,” Valdez said, noting that the issue has been discussed with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, and National Telecommunications Commission.
In 2025, DTI drafted a policy in accordance with the Vape Law and the Consumer Act of the Philippines requiring a permit for all vape sales and promotional materials.
The policy said no advertisement or promotional material for vape products shall be released without first obtaining an Advertisement Permit (AP) or Sales Promotion Permit (SPP) from the Office for the Special Mandate on Vaporized Nicotine and Non-Nicotine Products, their Devices, and Novel Tobacco Products (OSMV).
