Netherlands Considers Ban on Electronic Cigarette Flavors

Electronic cigarette consumers and advocates have less than a week to participate in the Dutch government's public consultation on the proposed ban of flavored electronic cigarette products. If implemented next year, this ban could lead to many manufacturers going out of business.

A new law will prohibit all e-cigarette flavors except for tobacco, taking effect on January 1, 2023—although products on the market before December 31st can continue to be sold until July 1st, 2023. The law will ban flavors in e-liquids with and without nicotine, and will apply to both bottled e-liquids and pre-filled products.

In June, the Swedish parliament rejected a proposed law that would have banned flavored e-cigarettes. Six European countries, not including the Netherlands, have already implemented restrictions on non-tobacco flavors. Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, and Lithuania have all enacted limits on flavored e-cigarettes, and Ukraine's ban on flavors will take effect in July 2023. No European country has completely banned all e-cigarette products.

This negotiation was an opportunity to comment specifically on the new amendments to the Tobacco and Smoking Products Ordinance in this country, which go beyond the previously announced flavor restrictions. The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, as well as the Ministry of Health, have proposed a list of 16 ingredients that are only allowed to be used in e-liquids with legal tobacco flavors. However, manufacturers argue that the limited list of permitted ingredients will prevent them from developing new flavors, including tobacco flavor.

Dutch e-cigarette advocates claim that ingredient restrictions will essentially bankrupt all e-liquid manufacturers in the Netherlands, as they will have to discard existing products and will be unable to redevelop their tobacco flavor using the new allowed list of flavors.

Although this law will only directly affect the Netherlands, any government policy on controversial topics like e-cigarettes may have an impact on legislation outside of their own borders. This is particularly true in the European Union, where member states regularly collaborate on health and tobacco-related issues. As the UK's New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) has pointed out, even UK e-cigarettes may be affected by taste bans in EU countries.

As negotiations are open to everyone, Dutch advocates are seeking the opinions of supporters of harm reduction for e-cigarettes and tobacco from other regions of the world beyond the European Union.

In June 2020, the Dutch Minister of Health, Paul Blokhuis, informed the Tweede Kamer (the Dutch Parliament) that the government would soon be introducing a bill to ban all flavored e-cigarette products except tobacco.

A study commissioned by the government and conducted by Trimbos Institute, which was used by Blokhuis to support his proposed flavor ban on e-cigarette products, utilized the science of cherry-picking to argue that flavored e-cigarettes are attractive to youth users. The study also claimed that "increasing evidence suggests that e-cigarettes are a gateway to tobacco cigarettes," despite a lack of evidence for this in the real world.

In December 2020, the government initiated a public consultation and received a record number of comments, the vast majority of which opposed the proposed law. Electronic cigarette advocates also submitted a petition signed by 19,000 consumers who opposed the restrictions.

In May 2021, the departing Dutch cabinet (ministerial conference) approved a flavor ban, despite strong opposition from independent e-cigarette industry leaders, Acvoda and Esigbond, and vapers in the Netherlands.

The law is set to come into effect on July 1st, 2022. However, in March 2022, Esigbond alerted the government that some of the original list of approved ingredients by RIVM were known carcinogens. As a result, the Dutch Cabinet postponed the implementation of the law until 2023 and revised the list accordingly.

The Dutch government will now have to overlook the second round of opposition from e-cigarette users in the Netherlands and across Europe, in order to implement its measures to address youth smoking.

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