Are peptides legal in Vietnam?

What does Vietnamese law actually regulate?

Medicines, and it defines a medicine by purpose rather than by chemistry.

The framework is the Law on Pharmacy No. 105/2016/QH13. Article 2 clause 2 defines a drug as a preparation containing a pharmaceutical ingredient or medicinal materials for the purpose of prevention, diagnosis, cure, treatment or mitigation of human diseases, or modification of physiological functions of the human body.

Read that definition carefully, because the whole question sits inside it. It is written around what the preparation is FOR. A molecule is not a drug in Vietnamese law by being a particular molecule; it is a drug by being intended for those human purposes. Material supplied and bought for laboratory research is not being supplied for any of them, and material used on a person is. That distinction is doing all of the work, and Vietnamese law does not publish a list saying where each research compound lands.

Does a compound have to be registered before it can be sold in Vietnam?

A drug does. Article 54 clause 1 of the Law on Pharmacy says drugs shall be registered before circulation in Vietnam, with a short list of exceptions.

Registration means a certificate of free sale granted by the Ministry of Health, through the Drug Administration of Vietnam, and Article 54 clause 4 says it may be granted for drugs that meet safety and efficacy requirements and are manufactured at an establishment that meets the conditions the Law sets out.

Article 6 of the same Law lists the prohibited acts, and clause 5 is the relevant one. It prohibits trading in drugs or drug materials that are not yet permitted for circulation, and it separately prohibits trading in drugs or drug materials used as samples for registration, testing, scientific research or display at exhibitions or fairs. That is worth stating plainly rather than leaving out, because it is the article a careful reader will want to see: research and testing material is explicitly outside the set of things that may be traded as drugs.

What Article 6 does not do is settle the prior question. It governs drugs, as Article 2 defines them. Whether a given research compound is a drug in that sense, in a given transaction, is the part no published Vietnamese instrument answers.

What does the law say about importing for research?

It allows it under a permit, and the permit caps the quantity.

Article 60 clause 2 of the Law on Pharmacy lists the drugs that may be imported without a certificate of free sale in Vietnam, in a quantity not exceeding the amount stated in their import permits. Law No. 44/2024/QH15 rewrote two points on that list, and this is their wording in force from 1 July 2025. Point h: “Bioequivalence tests, bioavailability assessment, making of samples for registration or testing or scientific research or display at exhibitions or fairs”. Point i: “Drugs in other cases for non-commercial purposes, including also cases where drugs are imported by medical examination and treatment establishments to meet their patients’ special treatment requirements”.

Clinical trials are no longer in point h. The same law added clause 5a, under which drugs for clinical trial may be imported “without import permits in quantities and of types posted on the Ministry of Health’s portal”, on the basis of trial outlines the Ministry of Health has approved. The clause excludes drugs under special control, which clause 4 of the same article allows to be imported only under import permits. It also rewrote clause 3, the permit route for drug materials, which now covers their import “For use as samples for registration, testing, research or display at exhibitions or fairs”.

The research and non-commercial routes survived the amendment. The research route still runs through an import permit, which makes it a licensed channel. For the non-commercial route, Decree No. 163/2025/ND-CP sets limits within which a person entering Vietnam needs no import licence for medicine for their own treatment, described in the next section. Neither route says an individual may import research material for themselves.

What does customs treat as a personal import?

Customs sets duty thresholds, and a separate drug rule sets how much medicine a person entering Vietnam may bring for their own treatment without an import licence.

Decree No. 134/2016/ND-CP is the instrument. Article 6 clause 1 grants a person entering Vietnam a duty-free allowance on luggage, which outside the alcohol and tobacco lines covers a reasonable quantity of personal belongings plus other items whose total customs value does not exceed VND 10,000,000, and it excludes anything on the lists of goods banned from import, suspended from import or subject to conditional import.

Article 8 clause 2 covers gifts. A gift from a foreign organisation or individual to a Vietnamese organisation or individual is exempt from duty where its customs value does not exceed VND 2,000,000, or where the value exceeds that but the duty on it would be under VND 200,000, up to four times a year. Point c of the same clause carries a separate allowance, up to VND 10,000,000 and four times a year, for gifts that are drugs or medical equipment for people having fatal diseases listed in the decree's own appendix.

The distinction that matters here is the one people most often miss. These are duty rules. They decide whether tax is owed on something that may lawfully cross the border. They do not decide whether a substance may cross it at all, which is settled by the rules for that category of goods. A value under a threshold is not a clearance.

For medicine, one of those rules is Article 60 of Decree No. 163/2025/ND-CP, in force since 1 July 2025. In the English translation published by LuatVietnam, clause 1 covers a medicinal product that is “part of the personal baggage of a person entering Vietnam, sent under a bill of lading, or goods carried by a person entering Vietnam for the treatment of his/her own illness”, and also goods belonging to diplomatic and consular missions, international organisations and the people working at them. Clause 2 lets such a product in “without an import license” in any one of three cases.

• A habit-forming medicine whose quantity “does not exceed a maximum of a 07-day supply”, or a psychotropic or precursor medicine within a 10-day supply, measured against the prescription that comes with it.
• Any other medicine with “a total customs value not exceeding 200 (two hundred) US dollars” per shipment, and “no more than 03 per year for 01 organization or individual”. For a person with a disease on the serious-disease list in Decree No. 134/2016/ND-CP, the ceiling is 10,000,000 dong per shipment and no more than four shipments a year.
• Any other medicine whose quantity “does not exceed a maximum of a 30-day supply”, measured against the prescription.

Outside those cases an import licence is needed, and clause 3 lists the application, which includes a copy of the prescription or outpatient treatment record. Article 60 does not mention research material. It is written for medicine a traveller needs for the treatment of their own illness.

What is genuinely unclear?

Three things, and a page that did not list them would be overstating what anyone can know from the published sources.

• No compound-level list. Vietnam publishes no instrument naming research peptides as a class, and no public list settles, compound by compound, which are treated as drugs and which are not.
• The implementing decree changed in 2025. Decree No. 163/2025/ND-CP replaced Decree No. 54/2017/ND-CP from 1 July 2025, so any guidance written against Decree 54, which is most of what is published in English, is out of date.
• Purpose is decided case by case. Because the Law defines a drug by intended purpose, the classification of a specific transaction is a question of fact about that transaction. No source consulted here resolves it in advance, and this page does not pretend to.

What should a buyer check?

The current text of the law in Vietnamese, the category the compound falls into, and a qualified local opinion if anything turns on it.

• The current Vietnamese text of the Law on Pharmacy as amended, rather than an English summary, and rather than an article written before 1 July 2025.
• Whether the specific compound is registered as a medicine in Vietnam, which is a question for the Drug Administration of Vietnam rather than for a supplier.
• What the material is being supplied for, in writing, because the Law's own definition turns on purpose.
• A qualified Vietnamese lawyer, if anything of consequence depends on the answer. Nobody selling you something is the right source for whether buying it is lawful for you.

Legality for purchase is also separate from eligibility in competitive sport, where many peptide classes are prohibited regardless of how they were obtained. The wider country-by-country picture is on are peptides legal, and the commercial pages for Vietnam are on peptides in Vietnam.

Sources

Every source below was opened and read before it was cited.

1. Law on Pharmacy No. 105/2016/QH13The National Assembly, 6 April 2016, in force 1 January 2017. English translation published in the FAOLEX legal database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Articles 2, 6 and 54, and the opening words of Article 60 clause 2, are quoted from this text, and Law No. 44/2024/QH15 did not amend any of those passages.
2. Law No. 44/2024/QH15 amending the Law on PharmacyPassed 21 November 2024. In force 1 July 2025, apart from a few provisions in force from 1 January 2025, none of which is quoted here. English translation published by LuatVietnam. It rewrites Article 60 clause 2 points h and i and Article 60 clause 3, adds Article 60 clause 5a on imports for clinical trial, and rewrites Article 54 clause 1 point b to refer to that new clause. The amended wording on this page is quoted from this text.
3. Decree No. 163/2025/ND-CP detailing the Law on Pharmacy, Vietnamese textThe Government, 29 June 2025, in force 1 July 2025, published in the Official Gazette (Công báo) issues 875 to 882 of 14 July 2025. Article 60, on importing medicine for non-commercial purposes, is on pages 74 to 76 of issue 875 and 876, and Article 129 ends Decree No. 54/2017/ND-CP from 1 July 2025.
4. Decree No. 163/2025/ND-CP, English translationEnglish translation published by LuatVietnam. The wording of Article 60 quoted on this page is quoted from this text.
5. Decree No. 134/2016/ND-CP on export and import dutiesThe Government, 1 September 2016. Article 6 sets the duty-free allowance for a traveller’s luggage and Article 8 sets the allowances for gifts. Both are quoted on this page.
6. Drug Administration of VietnamCuc Quan ly Duoc, the agency of the Ministry of Health that administers drug registration and the import permits described below.