Marketing trick: Unscrupulous sellers are getting very cunning at hiding vape products on e-commerce sites. — DARRAN TAN/The Star
PETALING JAYA: It has already been a month since the law regulating smoking products came into force, but vapes are still being sold online, albeit under “camouflage”.
While most e-commerce sites are adhering to the Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024, which bars online vape sales beginning Oct 1, some unscrupulous sellers have continued selling them using different keywords.
Instead of listing their products as vapes, these sellers are advertising them as “batteries”, “candies”, “crayons” and even “face masks”.
The products are designed in such a way that the logo bears commercial battery names while the shape resembles crayons, highlighters and candies. Their description also does not show any information of them being vaping products.
But the review segment of the product is a dead giveaway, where customers post pictures and reviews of the purchased item, which is a vape.
The listed products also give a variety of flavour choices despite being listed as a battery, crayon or highlighter.
Some online sellers are also selling vape sleeves, resembling stationery. Among the sleeve designs sighted on e-commerce sites are whiteboard markers and glue.
Malaysian Council for Tobacco Control (MCTC) president Dr M. Murallitharan said both the Health Ministry and online sales platforms must work together to police such platforms.
“Efforts should be made to encourage citizens to lodge complaints on such sales,” he said.
He said the MCTC and civil society partners were also putting together a citizen’s watchdog platform enabling the public to report such illegal advertising promotion and sales online.
“Government agencies can leverage this platform to act on these alerts or complaints,” he said.
Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association tobacco and smoking control coordinator Muhammad Sha’ani Abdullah said the proposed social media licensing scheme should also cover e-commerce platforms.
“We are against the sale of vape and tobacco products on online marketplaces,” he added.
Consumers’ Association of Penang senior education officer and anti-smoking activist NV Subbarow said the authorities should monitor online vape sellers who evade detection through the use of different keywords.
“This is a public health matter and our future generations are at stake,” he said.
Weighing in from a tech perspective, cybersecurity expert Fong Choong Fook said it is no longer sufficient to generally filter products solely on keywords.
He said vendors were getting more creative by using dynamic acronyms, slang words and abbreviations to identify products.
“This poses a challenge for platform operators to identify illicit items,” he said.
He said there are, however, feasible methods which can be used, such as using a combination of search terms and product images to narrow down samples of suspicious products.
“For example, searching for terms like ‘fresh’, ‘sugar’ and ‘relek’ alongside matching product images with known illicit product images can help narrow search targets.
“However, the method is not fullproof so operators also need to catch up in updating the search terms.
“AI too can be beneficial in these search and identification tasks,” he said.
The Control of Smoking Products for Public Health Act 2024 covers regulations on registration, sale, packaging, labelling and prohibition of smoking in public places.
The first phase of enforcement also includes a ban on the sale of smoking products online, among others, with most big industry players adhering to the rule strictly.
Subsequent enforcement measures are that tobacco products in convenience stores must be placed in locked storage areas while stores specialising in smoking products must ensure the products cannot be seen from the outside.
Packaging and labelling regulations will also be enforced for tobacco products beginning Oct 1, 2025.
