Tax on vaping: 38% price increase! An anti-smoking cessation tax designed by the tobacco industry.

FIVAPE has been informed of an imminent plan to tax e-liquids with or without nicotine at €0.15 per milliliter. An anti-smoking cessation tax that plays right into big tobacco's hands.

For over 10 years, vaping has been the No. 1 smoking cessation aid. Its impact is unprecedented and historic. In France, the tobacco industry has lost at least 4 million "customers" to vaping. Faced with this hemorrhage, the tobacco companies are pulling out all the stops with their hundreds of lobbyists and their highly sophisticated methods of influence to curb the rise of vaping. Since 2019, they have already succeeded in halting the dizzying fall in smoking prevalence in France¹.

Having saved the "puff" by guaranteeing the durability of single-use pre-filled cartridges, they are now maneuvering to impose a prohibitive tax on e-liquids, designed to directly benefit their products.

Tobacco companies use vaping as a lobbying tool

The tobacco industry barely holds 15% of the vaping market, while independent professionals dominate it.³ at 85%. It is positioning itself by offering only closed-system products: puffs or single-use cartridges. Its aim is to impose these closed systems to the detriment of open vaping, which requires advice and expertise and delivers better results in smoking cessation.

This proposed tax on e-liquids, based on a lump sum per milliliter, will have very little impact on tobacco industry products. Worse, it will benefit them even though the legislator wanted to get rid of them via a dedicated law...

Taxing vape as big tobacco wants: a health, environmental and ethical scandal

Taxing e-liquids means taxing the No. 1 smoking cessation aid. In terms of public health, this policy flies in the face of all health logic, and scorns the experience and tangible results achieved by vape over the last 10 years.

To respond so blindly to the will of the tobacco industry is incomprehensible:

• Gambling on the price of the most popular smoking cessation method in France runs the risk of discouraging smokers looking to quit. Let's not forget that the savings made by switching to vape are the primary reason why smokers decide to quit. 
• Raising the price of vaping products runs the risk that vapers, who are currently in the process of quitting smoking, will be discouraged by the budget involved, perceive that taxation sends out an implicit signal of danger and go back to smoking;
• Basically, this type of "behavioral" taxation is supposed to compensate for a negative externality. On the contrary, by improving health, vape saves the social security system millions of euros every year by preventing many tobacco-related pathologies. There is no justification for taxing vape;
• Taxation by the milliliter, and not on the final price of the product, is a perfidy worthy of the entire history of the tobacco industry. In fact, with a tax of €0.15/ml, the price of a 10-ml and 50-ml vial, the "standard" formats for refillable independent vape equipment, would rise by +25% and +38% respectively;
• Sealed cartridges, the tobacco industry's core business, are ultra-polluting, containing just 2 ml of e-liquid in a disposable, non-recyclable device. They are expected to increase by only +7.5%.

85% of the market represented by products manufactured in France by independent professionals would be taxed up to 6 times more than those of the tobacco industry, whose origins are foreign and totally opaque!

It should be remembered that tobacco consumption is highest among the underprivileged. Such a price differential would primarily impact the most disadvantaged, once again to the advantage of the tobacco industry and its misguided vision of vaping.

Last but not least, the obvious risk of a black market springing up and of suffering the health consequences of uncontrolled and potentially adulterated products is also very worrying. 

Stop the tobacco lobby's growing influence on French vaping regulations

French vape professionals, represented by FIVAPE, are independent of the tobacco industry, and have been the N°1 players in smoking cessation in France for over 10 years.

More than ten thousand people are involved in the operation of nearly 4,000 specialist stores and e-commerce sites, providing nationwide access to effective, high-quality withdrawal products. E-liquid laboratories, producing in France, operate to the exacting safety standards of a leading-edge industry.

It is these specialists in day-to-day weaning who are calling on the public authorities to stop giving in to the injunctions and toxic projects that always originate with the tobacco industry, the first to benefit from them.

After the authorization to continue selling pre-filled single-use devices, this tax would be one more step obtained by the tobacco lobby to transfer the vape market to its points of sale and ultimately reduce its health effectiveness.

Vape is the ally of withdrawal. The enemy is tobacco.

1. Baromètre Santé publique France, Prevalence of smoking and vaping in metropolitan France in 2022 among 18-75 year olds: https: //beh.santepubliquefrance.fr/beh/2023/9-10/2023_9-10_1.html / Details and explanations, book Merci la vape : http://www.iurls.net/mercilavape ︎
2. Xerfi 2024: The electronic cigarette market / December 2023 ︎