If you live in the UAE and are a vaper, you know that the story of vaping in Dubai is a bit of a good news/bad news situation. On one hand, people in the UAE were finally able to launch a legitimate vaping industry in 2019 when the government legalized the buying and selling of vaping products. That was a dream come true for any smoker who wanted to switch to an alternative form of nicotine consumption for harm reduction purposes but didn’t want to use a tobacco-based product like IQOS.
On the other hand, vaping in Dubai isn’t always easy – not with vaping products now being included in the UAE’s sin tax on tobacco products as of January 2024. The tax on vaping products isn’t a small one. Vaping products are taxed in the UAE at a rate of 100 percent, essentially doubling your price for vape gear unless the manufacturer or retailer decides to shoulder some of the tax burden – and on top of that, you still have to pay VAT.
Of course, smoked tobacco products are also subject to the sin tax, so there’s no reason why you can’t still save money if you switch to vaping. There’s no question, though, that the tax makes vape gear and e-juice significantly more expensive in the UAE than it is elsewhere in the world.
So, what do you do if you want to save money on vape gear in Dubai? In this article, we’ll go over some simple tips that you can use to keep your vaping expenses as low as possible.
Order Your Vape Gear Online
The best thing that you can do to save money on vape gear in Dubai is to order your vaping supplies online from a website like Premium Vape Dubai. No matter how attractive your local vape shops may try to make their prices, they still have overhead costs – like staff salaries, utilities and storefront rents – that online stores don’t have. Online-only retailers don’t just have lower overhead costs; they can also offer lower prices because they tend to have better distribution deals and can buy products in higher volumes than brick-and-mortar stores. When a product has a lower retail price, you’ll pay less in tax – so unless you need a product right away and can’t wait for shipping, you should buy your vape gear online as much as possible.
Use the Most Cost-Effective Vaping Setup
If you want to save money on vape gear in Dubai, buying from the right type of retailer is only half of the battle. The other half is vaping in the most efficient way possible to ensure that you aren’t constantly buying e-liquid and new coils.
Here are a few tips to ensure that your vaping setup is as economical as it can be.
- Consider building your own coils. Vape coils are fairly expensive, and the fact that you’ll pay the full retail price of the coils again in sin tax makes them even more pricey. Coil building supplies, on the other hand, are only vaping products if they’re explicitly marketed as such. You can get resistance wire from electronics retailers and hobby shops, and organic cotton pads are available from retailers that sell cosmetics products. In both cases, there’s no sin tax.
- Remember, however, that building your own coils won’t save you a great deal of money if you’re building high-end coils for cloud chasing. If your vaping setup produces such enormous clouds that you constantly need to buy vape juice, it’ll negate your potential savings. Your best bet is to use a small rebuildable atomizer and stick to single-coil setups.
- If you don’t want to build your own coils, your next best option is to buy a pod-based device that you can fill yourself with bottled e-liquid. Since pod vaping systems are designed to take full advantage of nicotine salt e-liquid with high nicotine strengths, you’ll get good value for money because you won’t need to vape as frequently as you would if you were using a vaping device designed for lower-strength e-liquids.
- Stay away from vaping devices with pre-filled pods; they’re very expensive in Dubai.
- Regardless of the type of vaping device that you use, you’ll always get the best life out of your vape coils if you use unsweetened e-liquid. Sweet vape juice contains sucralose, which leaves deposits on coils and causes them to taste burned.
Try Making Your Own E-Liquid
A final thing to consider if you want to save money when you buy vape gear in Dubai is making your own e-liquid. There are two reasons why DIY e-liquid can make vaping so much cheaper for you. The first reason is completely logical: The supplies for e-liquid making cost less than the finished products. If you’re the one manufacturing your own e-liquid, then you’re not supporting another company’s profit margins.
The second reason, though, is that DIY e-liquid supplies are only subject to the Dubai sin tax if they’re marketed as vaping products. To make your own vape juice, you’ll need to buy bulk nicotine. You’ll pay the sin tax for that, but since you can buy liquid nicotine in high strengths and in large containers, your supply can last quite a while.
The UAE sin tax on vaping products, however, shouldn’t apply to the other things that you’ll need for DIY e-liquid. You’ll need vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol, and you can get both of those things from stores that sell pharmaceutical supplies. You’ll also need flavors, but the companies that sell flavoring agents market them for food – not for e-liquid.
Making your own e-liquid isn’t difficult, but it does require preparation and careful measuring. You also need to be careful about the flavoring agents that you use, because oil-based flavors aren’t appropriate for inhaling. You can find websites and discussion groups with people who are happy to answer your questions and walk you through the process of making your own vape juice. You can also find recipes online that can help you create clones of many popular e-liquid flavors.
