A consumer advocacy group advised Filipinos not to bring electronic cigarettes, or vapes, into Singapore to avoid heavy fines or even imprisonment.
“If you pack a vape or e-cigarette in your luggage, you are risking heavy fines, deportation and maybe even jail time,” said Martin Cullip, an international fellow at the Consumer Center for The Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
Cullip, an advocate for tobacco harm reduction, said the policy is contradictory given that traditional cigarettes are openly sold in Singapore.
“Incredibly, in a country that openly sells deadly cigarettes on every corner, choosing the safer option could land you with severe punishment. This treatment of citizens trying to quit combustible cigarettes with less harmful products flies in the face of science and common sense,” he said.
Tobacco harm reduction involves using safer nicotine products like vapes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches to reduce the harm from smoking. Scientific studies show that it is the combustion process, and not nicotine itself, that causes diseases in smokers.
Cullip’s warning comes as Singapore announced a crackdown on vaping, which includes stiffer fines and tougher penalties. Authorities have also stepped up enforcement, conducting spot checks on trains, at bus terminals and in public parks.
“For Filipino tourists or overseas workers passing through, this isn’t just a heavy-handed policy. It’s a potential trap,” Cullip said.
According to a report by Cebu Pacific, about 700,000 Filipinos traveled to Singapore in 2023, making the Philippines the sixth-largest source of tourists for the country.
Cullip noted the contradiction in Singapore, where cigarettes are legal despite being proven to kill half of their long-term users, while vapes, which are designed to help smokers reduce risk, are treated as dangerous narcotics.
“By doing this, Singapore isn’t protecting health. It’s protecting the cigarette trade and cementing the false belief that vaping is just as harmful, or even worse, than smoking,” he said.
He said the policy tells people who smoke not to switch, but to keep smoking instead. “And given the sinister threats contained in the legislation, no one would risk using a vape in Singapore. Smokers who might otherwise switch to a safer option will be forced to stick with cigarettes, which can only cause more harm,” he said.
A global body of evidence suggests that restricting safer nicotine products hinders the reduction of smoking rates and encourages people to continue smoking, he said.
By blocking a healthier alternative, Singapore has created a “perverse situation” where the only certain outcome is an increase in disease and death, he said.
Cullip said Singapore is moving in the opposite direction of other countries, such as the United States where the Food and Drug Administration has authorized several vaping products as “appropriate for the protection of public health.”
In the United Kingdom and New Zealand, public health authorities actively promote switching to vaping as a safer alternative for smokers, he said.
Cullip said a traveler from New Zealand, where doctors and government health agencies endorse vapes, could land at Changi Airport and suddenly find themselves criminalized for doing exactly what their health system told them to do.
Singapore claims vapes have become “delivery devices” for drugs and that its crackdown is necessary. But Cullip said the issue is one of enforcement, not health.
“Criminalizing all nicotine vapes is like banning kitchen knives because someone once used one in a crime,” he said. “It’s policy madness that punishes ordinary smokers who are simply trying to protect their own health, while doing nothing to solve the problem of illicit substances.”
He said the warning for Filipinos could not be clearer. “Don’t bring a vape to Singapore. You risk punishment far worse than the so-called ‘crime’ of switching away from cigarettes. But the bigger tragedy is what this says about Singapore’s public health priorities. Instead of encouraging safer choices, it crushes them. Instead of reducing harm, it creates it. And instead of setting an example for Asia, it has become a cautionary tale of how prohibition breeds more harm, not less,” he said.
