FIRST it was hair, then dildos, now vape. What’s next, telling us how loudly we can talk in restaurants, how we dress, or even how we procreate?
Each ban is framed as moral or medical, but make no mistake: this is a longstanding pattern of the state encroaching into the private lives of Malaysians.
In November 1992, the then-Information Minister Tan Sri Mohamed Rahmat went on live RTM television to enforce a ban on long hair for male artists. Icons like Awie of Wings and Amy of Search were effectively banned until they caved and cut their hair. Even cultural maestro M. Nasir faced similar restrictions.
This wasn’t about safety or propriety, it was about control. This isn’t about health, it’s about rights.
In a democracy, government should protect minority freedoms, not police the lifestyle choices of its citizens. The majority doesn’t need protection; they already hold power. It’s the minorities who need defending, whether defined by lifestyle, race, or religion: the smoker, the vaper, even those who drink alcohol or gamble.
Equal protection must mean protection for all.
By 2019, the Malaysian government banned smoking in all eateries and restaurants, whether they were air-conditioned or open-air, along with a three-meter perimeter around them, under the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations.
These were not luxury venues, but meeting points for ordinary Malaysians. Yet faceless regulators thought they knew better, stripping owners of how they could run their own businesses, and denying customers the comfort of gathering as they always had.
Who are these regulators, anyway, to dictate how ordinary people live?
Some of them frame bans as necessary to reduce healthcare costs, yet those with means still seek private care.
If healthcare is the problem, then fix healthcare, not lifestyles.
The fight isn’t about vaping or sugar or smoking.
It’s about whether Malaysia will move forward as a confident, liberal society or collapse into petty authoritarianism.
Once you accept the logic of overregulation, nothing is safe.
Today it’s vape. Tomorrow it could be how we eat, how we dress, or even how we live as families.
Enough bans. Enough overreach.
Malaysia must choose: freedom.
This choice will determine whether we become a society of free people or a nation of obedient subjects. — September 12, 2025
Mudasir Khan is a Penang-born entrepreneur who reads Scoop