The European Commission wants to set a minimum limit for taxes on nicotine e-juice. Aiming to reduce the use of smokeless nicotine products, ETHRA is now calling on snus and vejp users to have their say on the EU's plans to harmonise taxes on tobacco and e-liquid - before it's too late.
"The European Commission has explicitly stated that under its new EU Beating Cancer plan, will use taxes, flavour bans and other restrictions to limit e-cigarettes and other nicotine products. This will only lead to more Europeans continuing to smoke," writes the consumer organisation Ethra, European Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates, on its website.
Working for low taxes
According to Ethra taxes on e-liquid and other harm reduction products such as snus and nicotine pouches should be as low as possible.
"Harmonised taxes should not prevent individual countries from choosing a harm reduction strategy to reduce smoking in their country. Therefore, the EU should make a clear distinction between smoking and smokeless tobacco when it comes to taxation. The system should be based on more people switching cigarettes to less harmful alternatives - from high risk to low risk" writes Ethra.
Taxation should take into account health issues, but at the same time be an ethically sustainable response to the aggressive taxation of smoking tobacco, says the organisation, which is a collaboration of consumer associations in the 27 EU countries. According to a recent Ethra survey of 35,000 vejp users, the price of e-cigarettes is a major barrier for those who use both e-cigarettes and smoking tobacco, to switch completely to vejpning.
Consumers have their say
In some countries, such as Sweden, already e-juice taxed (up to SEK 4 per millilitre). In Germany, the Parliament last voted last week through a tax on e-liquid and Denmark is expected to do the same. At the same time, the Estonia abolished tax on e-liquid with the motivation to reduce the black market in e-juice.
The European Commission has long planned to even out tax differences between countries, partly to reduce cross-border trade. However, consumers, businesses and organisations will first have their say on plans to harmonise taxes on both tobacco and smokeless nicotine products. The deadline for this is 22 June.
"It is important that everyone who uses alternative nicotine products to quit smoking makes their voices heard. Although many questions revolve around smoking tobacco, some of the questions in the questionnaire are of great importance for the future," writes Ethra on its website.
"No need to answer all questions"
According to Ethra it is easy to register (with a google account or similar) to answer the European Commission's questions.
"It is not really necessary to answer all the questions. Most important are questions in section 3 and personal data in section one" writes Ethra.
