Thailand has banned e-cigarettes since 2014, its tourism authority has been warning visitors about it for years, and tourists still get caught. In 2026 the net tightened around the region: Vietnam started fining vapers at the start of the year, Laos bans them as well, and on 23 September Thailand’s cabinet approved a bill to make cannabis strictly medical. Here is what the law says, how it plays out for riders on the road, and why the only sensible place for your vape during a riding holiday is your drawer at home.
The warning that never goes away
The Tourism Authority of Thailand has carried the same notice for years, under a headline that could not be clearer: electronic cigarettes are illegal in Thailand. It explains that the ban applies to visitors exactly as it applies to Thai citizens, that travellers should not bring any e-cigarette, device or liquid into the country, and that foreign tourists have been fined on the spot or arrested because they did not know. It also asks travel agents and tour operators to make sure their clients are told.
Consider this our part of the job. If you are coming to ride with us, or on your own, and you vape, read the next few minutes carefully. This is not a rule that gets waved away with a smile. It is one of the few areas where Thailand is stricter than almost every country its visitors come from, and people who assume otherwise keep finding out the expensive way.
What the law actually says
The ban is older than many riders realise. Thailand prohibited the import of e-cigarettes and their liquids in 2014, and a separate rule bans selling them or providing them as a service. Those rules sit on top of the Customs Act of 2017, which is where the serious penalties live. Importing prohibited goods can carry up to ten years in prison or a fine of up to five times the value of the goods, and the goods are confiscated. Possessing goods that were brought into the country illegally carries up to five years, or a fine of four times their value, or both.
Then there is the tobacco control law, which restricts where you can smoke nicotine at all, with fines of up to 5,000 baht for using it in prohibited places. Under the separate consumer protection rules, sellers face up to three years in prison or fines of up to 600,000 baht. In practice, a tourist caught with a single vape is very unlikely to see the inside of a courtroom for ten years. But the fact that the law allows those penalties is exactly what gives police a lot of room, and a tourist very little.
Does that include my heated tobacco stick?
Almost certainly, yes. Thai regulators treat heated tobacco devices, the kind where you slide a small tobacco stick into a battery-powered holder, as part of the same e-cigarette family. Their import and sale are banned under the same rules. People who switched to those devices because they feel more like “real” cigarettes are often surprised to discover that, as far as Thai customs is concerned, they are carrying the same forbidden gadget as the teenager with a strawberry-flavoured vape.
Refill liquids and pods count too. So does the charger if it is obviously part of the kit, and so does the little box of spare coils rattling around in the bottom of your tank bag. The tourism authority’s notice specifically mentions liquids and associated equipment, so there is no loophole in bringing only the parts.
Why Thailand takes it so seriously
The government’s argument has always been about young people. Officials worry that flavoured vapes are pulling teenagers into nicotine, and the numbers they cite are striking: a 2022 survey found that around fifteen percent of girls and twenty percent of boys aged thirteen to fifteen had used e-cigarettes, far more than smoked ordinary cigarettes. In early 2025 the prime minister ordered a nationwide crackdown, with the education ministries told to act in schools and police told to go after the smuggling networks.
The seizures that followed were enormous. By March 2025 the authorities reported taking around 800,000 devices and accessories worth roughly 200 million baht off the market. Despite all that, vapes are still visibly for sale in some tourist areas, under the counter or not very far under it, which is exactly what confuses visitors. Seeing something sold openly on a night market stall is not evidence that it is legal. It is evidence that somebody is taking a risk, and when the police come by, it is the buyer holding the device who gets asked questions.
What actually happens to tourists
It usually goes something like this. A visitor lands with a vape in a pocket or in the hand luggage, gets through the airport without anyone noticing, and uses it openly for a few days. Then a police officer spots it, on a beach, outside a bar, at a checkpoint. What follows depends on the day, the place and the officer. Some tourists get a lecture and a confiscation. Some get an on-the-spot fine. Some get taken to the station, held for a few hours or overnight and fined there.
There is also an uglier side. Because the formal penalties are so high, there have been cases, reported in the Thai press, of officers accused of using the threat of prosecution to demand large sums of cash from foreign tourists caught with a vape. That does not make the situation any more pleasant for the tourist standing on the pavement being told that the official penalty is several years in prison. The simple way to never be in that conversation is to not carry the thing.
Why riders are more exposed than beach tourists
This is where it becomes a motorcycling story. A tourist on a beach can go a whole fortnight without speaking to a police officer. A rider cannot. Police checkpoints are a normal part of riding in the north, especially on the approaches to towns and on the main roads around Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and the border areas. Officers check licences, helmets, registration papers and, near the borders, sometimes bags.
Here is how it usually plays out. You pull into a checkpoint, flip up your visor, hand over your licence and your International Driving Permit. Everything is in order. The officer looks at the bike, looks at you, and notices the vape clipped to the strap of your tank bag or sticking out of your jacket pocket. You have just turned a friendly two-minute licence check into a problem that can take the rest of the day. On a group ride, that also means everybody else waits at the roadside while it gets sorted out.
Border crossings are the worst place to be caught
Multi-country riders face another layer. At the land borders with Laos, bags and vehicles are more likely to be looked at than at an airport arrivals hall, and customs officers are specifically there to find goods that should not be crossing. A vape picked up somewhere on the road and carried back into Thailand in a pannier is an import of prohibited goods in the eyes of Thai customs, and Laos bans e-cigarettes too. That is the most serious category of the offence, not the least.
If you ride a route that goes out and back across a border, treat each crossing as a fresh customs inspection. Whatever you bought on the other side that is illegal in Thailand stays on the other side. That applies to vapes, and it applies to a few other things that are easy to buy in some neighbouring markets and very hard to explain on the Thai side.
Next door, the rules just got tighter too
Riders heading on to Vietnam should know that Thailand is no longer the strict exception in the region. Vietnam’s National Assembly voted at the end of 2024 to ban e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products from 2025, and under a decree that took effect on 31 December 2025, using one can earn you a fine of three to five million dong, roughly a hundred to two hundred US dollars, and the device has to be destroyed. The police in Vietnam’s tourist provinces have not been shy about enforcing traffic rules on foreigners this year, so there is no reason to think they will be relaxed about this one. Laos, in the middle, bans the sale, import and use of e-cigarettes under its tobacco control law.
So if your ride goes Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, the rule of thumb is simple: the vape is illegal in all three, so do not carry it anywhere on the trip. Buying one from a stall that sells them under the counter and riding it across a border is exactly the scenario customs officers are paid to catch.
And while we are on the subject of things people assume are legal
A word on cannabis, because it confuses a lot of visitors. Thailand decriminalised it in 2022, and for a few years shops selling buds and pre-rolls popped up in every tourist street. In late June 2025 the government started to reverse course, banning sales without a medical prescription, and on 23 September 2026 the cabinet approved a cannabis control bill that restricts use to medical purposes only, with doctor-signed prescriptions, tighter penalties and shops required to become medical facilities as their licences expire. Recreational use is not legal, whatever the shop windows in some tourist streets suggest. For riders, none of that matters much, because riding a motorcycle under the influence of anything is illegal, dangerous, and the fastest way to void your travel insurance.
The only sensible rule on a riding holiday is the same for cannabis as for alcohol: nothing before or during a riding day. What you do in the morning before getting on a big bike in the mountains is everybody’s business, because everybody in the group rides behind you.
The cigarette rules, while we are here
Ordinary cigarettes are legal in Thailand, but there are rules that catch visitors too. The duty-free allowance is 200 cigarettes, one carton, per adult. People who arrive with two or three cartons from a duty-free shop elsewhere sometimes get stopped and fined at the airport, and the fine can be far more than the cigarettes cost. If you smoke, buy one carton, not a suitcase.
Smoking is also banned in many public places, including many beaches, parks, markets, restaurants with air conditioning and the grounds of temples. At the main airports, the smoking areas are outside the terminal buildings. On a riding day, the practical rule is simple: smoke at the stops where the locals smoke, away from the temple gates and the food stalls, and bin the butts. Throwing a cigarette end out of a moving vehicle is both illegal and, in the dry season in the north, genuinely dangerous.
What a good briefing should tell you before you fly
Any operator worth riding with should give you a short list of the rules that surprise people before the trip. The vape ban belongs near the top of it, together with licence categories, the helmet law and the thirty-day visa rule. Better a rider who rolls their eyes at an obvious warning than one who spends an afternoon of their holiday at a police station.
If you do vape, bring nicotine replacement instead. Pharmacies in Thailand sell nicotine gum and patches, and they work fine on a riding day. Better still, a week of mountain air, cold mornings and a full day of concentration on the road is not a bad time to quit.
What if you already have one with you?
Suppose you are reading this in a hotel room in Chiang Mai with a vape in your bag. The honest advice is to get rid of it and not use it again while you are in the country. Do not use it in public, do not use it at the hotel pool, do not carry it on the bike. Do not try to take it with you across a land border either. Throwing a device away is annoying. It is a lot less annoying than the alternative.
If you are stopped with one, stay calm and polite. Do not argue that it is legal at home; nobody at the checkpoint cares. Ask for the Tourist Police if you feel the situation is not being handled properly; their number is 1155 and they speak English. And if something goes wrong on a guided ride, tell your guide immediately. A calm local voice that speaks Thai helps more than anything else in that moment.
Is Thailand being unreasonable?
Opinions differ, and plenty of public health experts in Europe would argue that vapes are a useful way for smokers to cut down. That argument is not happening in Thailand, or rather, it is happening, but not in a way that helps a tourist in 2026. The law is clear, the government has doubled down on enforcement, and the tourism authority has been warning visitors for years. Whatever you think about the policy, you are a guest, and the rules of the house are the rules of the house.
It is worth remembering that the same country lets you ride a big bike up a mountain road with more than a thousand bends, eat food from a street stall cooked over charcoal and stay out until the small hours in a bar with live music. It is not a joyless place. It just happens to have a very firm opinion on one small gadget.
How it goes wrong, every time
The mistakes are always variations on the same few themes, and it is easy to see how they happen. A rider puts the vape on the café table at a fuel stop, next to a police pickup. Someone lends a jacket to a friend without checking the pockets, and the friend gets stopped. A couple picks up a few disposable vapes somewhere along a multi-country trip and forgets they are in the top box. Nobody in these situations is a criminal mastermind. They are people who did not think the rule applied to them.
Most of these situations end with a fine, a bruised ego and a delayed lunch. But they cost half a day, a lot of money and a large amount of goodwill, and in the worst cases a flight home. It is a strange way to remember a holiday that was supposed to be about mountains.
The rest of the pre-trip checklist
While you are thinking about what not to bring, it is worth running through what you do need. A passport with at least six months left. The Thailand Digital Arrival Card filled in before you fly. A motorcycle licence from home with the right category, and an International Driving Permit that covers motorcycles. Travel insurance that explicitly covers riding a motorcycle of the size you will be riding. Your own helmet if you prefer it, although ours are fine. And, since mid-September, a clear idea of how many days you are allowed to stay, because the visa-free stay for most Western passports is now thirty days.
None of this is complicated. It is just the difference between a riding holiday that starts at the airport and one that starts at an office counter.
Riding Thailand for real, smoke-free
If you want to ride the north without worrying about any of this, the 6-day Northern Thailand ride covers the classic mountain roads, the Golden Triangle tour takes you up to where Thailand meets Laos and Myanmar, and the 10-day Amazing Thailand loop gives you the full picture. Each one is a guided tour with a licensed road captain and a support van.
Questions about what to bring, or what to leave behind? Ask us on WhatsApp or at info@bigbiketours.com. A good motorcycle tour starts with a packing list that keeps you on the road, and a big biking tour is no exception. Your motorbike tour should end with photos of mountains, not of a police station.
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