FLER at APE

In 2025, the global nicotine industry reached a critical turning point. Regulatory realignment, category shifts, capital repositioning and technological intervention unfolded in parallel, loosening old structures while new ones took shape. 2Firsts reviews nine pivotal events that reshaped the industry’s trajectory.

Azerbaijan’s Milli Majlis will hold public hearings regarding the use of e-cigarettes. The topic has been included in the 2026 spring session work plan of the Milli Majlis Committee on Agrarian Policy. During the spring session, the committee plans to convene a public hearing titled “Health is our goal: an end to e-cigarettes.”

A bill introduced in Singapore’s Parliament on Feb. 12 proposes major increases in penalties for vaping-related offences, including higher maximum fines for users, sellers and smugglers. The draft would also rename the current Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) Act as the Tobacco and Vaporisers Control Act.

Kumulus Vape has launched Labster, a 700 sq m production unit in the Lyon Metropolis near the group’s headquarters, for e-liquids and DIY concentrates. The site is equipped with automated lines supplied by CDA (Constructions d’Automatismes) to carry out bottling and labeling. Its theoretical capacity is described as several million bottles per year in 10–100 ml formats, and it is already operational.

A Seoul court has annulled South Korea’s health-levy assessments imposed on multiple importers of nicotine liquids used for vaping. While the court agreed the nicotine could be treated as “tobacco” because it was found to be leaf-derived, it ruled the levy—stacked with other taxes and calculated on a blunt, volume-only basis—was so severe it effectively deprived businesses of the ability to operate, breaching constitutional proportionality and equality standards.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) will launch a program allowing inmates to buy sealed disposable nicotine vapes and packs of nicotine pouches through prison commissaries. Tobacco has been banned in Oklahoma prisons for 10 years, and cigarettes and cigars will remain prohibited.