Prabowo Orders Total Vape Ban if Studies Prove Greater Risks and Drug Gateway
JAKARTA – President Prabowo Subianto has requested that a total ban on electronic cigarettes, or vapes, be implemented if joint studies show that vapes carry greater risks and continue to be used as a gateway for new types of narcotics. Prabowo asserted that the safety of the people is the highest law of the land, commonly expressed by the phrase salus populi suprema lex esto.
“If that is the case, I order the total ban on vapes in Indonesia to be implemented without hesitation,” Prabowo said in remarks delivered by Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs Djamari Chaniago at the commemoration of International Anti-Narcotics Day 2026 in Bogor Regency, West Java, on Thursday (23/7/2026).
The President instructed the Head of the National Narcotics Agency, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Trade, the Minister of Law, the Head of the Food and Drug Supervisory Agency, and the Director General of Customs and Excise at the Ministry of Finance to convene together within a short timeframe. He said the step must be taken in order to formulate and strictly re-regulate the governance of the electronic cigarette trade in Indonesia.
“Carry out layered supervision of import channels and distribution,” he said.
On narcotics prevention, Prabowo said Indonesia’s challenges have grown heavier because the development of New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) is moving very quickly and unconventionally, and often emerges faster than the ability of regulations to control them.
He continued that various studies also show that around 39.5 per cent of electronic cigarette users admit to having used liquids containing recreational drugs, with cannabis being the most widely used substance, followed by ecstasy (MDMA) and cocaine.
“This method is chosen because it is considered more practical, difficult to detect, and wrongly perceived to be safer compared to other methods of consuming narcotics,” the President said in his remarks.
Prabowo explained that these factors indicate that electronic cigarettes have developed into one of the new media exploited by narcotics syndicates to distribute illicit substances covertly.
Therefore, anticipatory steps are needed through strengthened regulation, increased supervision, and comprehensive policy studies, in order to protect society, particularly the younger generation, from the threat of narcotics abuse.
He stressed that if the threat is left unchecked, it will endanger the sustainability of human life, threaten the successor generation of human life, and threaten the future leaders of the Indonesian nation.
“We must not allow our future to be destroyed by that smoke and poisonous liquid,” Prabowo added.