Six months after the Netherlands banned the sale of flavored vapes, sweet e-cigarettes are still making their way into the market, especially in nightclubs. The Dutch Food and Commodity Authority says they are especially popular with young people.
Although it has been more than six months since the sale of flavored e-cigarettes was banned in the Netherlands. The Dutch Food and Commodity Authority banned the sale of flavored vapes, the Telegraph reported on July 4. The Netherlands Food and Commodity Authority (Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit, NVWA) has recently publicly admitted that e-cigarettes containing sweet flavors are still prevalent.
In some tobacco stores and evening convenience stores in Amsterdam’s West End, it was found that although flavored e-cigarettes are no longer on the shelves, they are still secretly sold under the counter. Regular tobacco stores appeared to comply with the ban by selling only tobacco-flavored legal e-cigarettes.
However, an employee at Primera Tobacco Shop pointed directly to the nightclubs: “Go there and check it out, they’re still selling it.”
These nightclubs do offer a variety of flavored e-cigarettes, such as cherry, bubblegum, and mango. One store even sells flavor drops that customers can use to prepare their favorite flavors.
NVWA spokesman Lex Benden That means it will take time for the effects of the ban to show up. For now, the NVWA is focusing on the importation of e-cigarettes and claims to have had significant results.
“So far we have ensured that more than 3.5 million flavors of e-cigarettes have not yet made it into Dutch stores.”
The NVWA is still monitoring various websites and “almost all e-commerce registered in the Netherlands has been shut down.”
The spokesman said, “We checked about 600 stores and found that 80 percent of them complied with the ban.” Retailers found to be selling flavored e-cigarettes illegally face hefty fines. Fines can be up to €4,500 per e-cigarette brand and total up to €22,500 per inspection.
In 2023, one in five Dutch young people aged 12 to 25 use e-cigarettes. Flavored vapes are especially popular among 12- to 14-year-olds, with 10.2% of 12- to 14-year-olds smoking e-cigarettes.
A black market for e-cigarettes has developed in the Netherlands as regular stores are banned from selling flavored vapes.
“We are monitoring social media and removing posts offering e-cigarettes. In the last few months, such posts have been deleted 1,000 times.”
The NVWA is still in talks with social media platforms in the hope that they will be more proactive in identifying and removing these posts. However, Benden admits that enforcing the ban remains a daunting task.
“This illegal trade exists because young people want to smoke vapes. It’s a social problem.”
