Recently, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health of Kazakhstan announced their reasons for supporting the ban on e-cigarettes. Both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health believe that e-cigarettes will affect people’s health, especially the younger generation, and therefore support a ban on e-cigarettes.
If the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan finally approves the amendments to the Health Law, the decision will enter into force in 2024. The proposed ban was supported by two ministries, with the Ministry of Finance stating that nicotine-containing vapes have been a consumption tax commodity since 2018. In addition, the tax rate has been increasing continuously over the past three years: from 2023, the consumption tax rate will be 53 tenge/ml. The total excise tax for 2020 will be 17 million tenge, 29 million tenge in 2021, 211 million tenge in 2022 and 680 million tenge in the first eight months of 2023. But despite a solid increase in budget revenue, the Finance Ministry supported the call for a ban on e-cigarettes and vaping oil. The document proposes imprisonment of up to three years for importing, manufacturing, purchasing, selling, transporting e-cigarettes and e-cigarette liquids, and a fine of 25 MRP (86,250 tenge) for illegally trading goods that are prohibited or restricted by law. In July 2023, members of the Kazakhstan inter-ministerial committee voted almost unanimously to impose a total ban on the sale, import, export and manufacture of e-cigarettes in Kazakhstan.