Prime Highlights:
The new law will set stringent requirements which include raising the age to 20 for purchasing tobacco products and a total ban on vapor products intended to flavor tobacco or flavorless.
It would cap the amount of nicotine allowed in the nicotine pouches.
Key Background:
Latvia has imposed new strict rules, effective from January 2025. These tight new regulations are set to cut down the consumption of tobacco and avoid the intake of nicotine products. This bill contains an age limit for tobacco products and changing the content of nicotine products.
The tobacco products will include any type of disposable vapes, refillable e-cigarettes, and nicotine pouches sold to a person younger than 20 years. In addition, vaping products will only be allowed with tobacco flavors or without any flavors at all, while nicotine levels in each of the nicotine pouches will significantly be reduced.
Latvia’s public broadcaster, Latvijas Televīzija, has discovered how some businesses – including refill cartridges for e-cigarettes which intend to sell separate bottles of nicotine and flavoring that will be mixed at home by customers. Jekaterina Smirnova, a representative of the e-cigarette company Ecodumas, thinks that at first, the product range will be limited, but it will increase as businesses adapt to the new regulations.
Anrijs Matiss, a board member of the Traditional and Smokeless Tobacco Products Association, has pointed out that “underground trading could be very difficult to control, further undermining the effectiveness of the new measures.” The association has been opposed to the law from its inception and believes the law will push consumers to buy products from abroad or through non-regulated online sites like Telegram. The association also warns that the law will lead to a loss of about €10 million yearly in tax for the government.
Meanwhile, the nicotine pouch industry will prepare itself for a disruption as some are set to disappear from store shelves while it adjusts to the new restrictions on nicotine content. Such policies are in-line with the effort, on a large scale, towards reducing tobacco prevalence in Europe by the EU aiming to reduce smoking by 30 percent by 2025 as the EU strives towards a “smoke-free generation” by the year 2040. Such measures are becoming commonplace in some European countries and include bans like those on selling filter cigarettes placed in the various supermarkets and not selling tobacco goods in supermarkets either.
