The Ministry of Health is soliciting feedback on a draft bill amending and supplementing several articles of the Law on Pharmacy, proposing additional regulations on trading drugs and drug materials online.
Under the proposal, this activity would not only be prohibited via livestreaming but would also be required to ensure electronic identification of sellers and transaction traceability.
Specifically, Clause 2, Article 4 of the draft proposes amending Clause 19, Article 6 of the Law on Pharmacy, specifying prohibited acts in trading drugs and drug materials through e-commerce methods.
Accordingly, business activities would be banned if conducted through sales livestreams or via means that do not ensure electronic seller identification and transaction traceability in accordance with laws on electronic transactions.
The draft also proposes replacing the phrase "e-commerce trading floors, sales e-commerce applications, sales websites with online ordering functions" with "direct e-commerce platforms, intermediary e-commerce platforms."
According to the Ministry of Health, the amendment aims to ensure consistency with the Law on Electronic Transactions while enabling online drug business operations to trace sellers and transactions. This requirement is established because pharmaceuticals are special goods that directly affect public health.
Identifying sellers and tracing transactions helps regulatory authorities determine the entities trading drugs online when inspection or enforcement is needed.
Current regulations have already set limits on online drug sales. Starting July 1, 2025, retailing prescription drugs, drugs on the special control list, and drugs on the retail-restricted list via e-commerce is strictly prohibited, except when serving medical quarantine requirements during Class A infectious disease outbreaks.
For specially controlled drugs, the law also prohibits online wholesaling.
In 2025, the Drug Administration of Vietnam (Ministry of Health) requested e-commerce platforms and social networks to step up controls and block the purchase and sale of prescription drugs and specially controlled drugs after recording instances of these pharmaceuticals being traded online.
According to regulatory agencies, trading pharmaceuticals in the online environment requires strict control over sellers, origin, and the transaction process to mitigate the risks of counterfeit, origin-unclear, and substandard drugs circulating on the market.
