The EU flavor ban opens a gap, but not where most vape brands look
The EU has not banned vape flavors. What it has done is stranger: it let member states ban them one by one, and banned heated tobacco flavors EU-wide via Directive 2022/2100.[1][2]
Most vape brands read the ban headline and pivot to tobacco-flavored HNB. The text points the other way. 48% of EU monthly vapers use fruit flavors, against 36% tobacco, per the EU’s Eurobarometer.[3] Tobacco HNB cannot legally carry fruit. The gap that matters sits between the two: a botanical, nicotine-carrying HNB stick in vape-style flavors.
PMI bet on that slot with LEVIA, its tobacco-free nicotine line.[4] Its only documented outcome so far: a circumvention charge from CNCT, the French anti-tobacco group.[4] No sales figures, market feedback or regulatory follow-up have been published, so the slot remains a bet, not a win. That is the entry window.
This post maps the ban structure, quantifies the demand, walks the risks, and lands on the product decision.
The map: the EU vape flavor ban is a patchwork, not a blanket ban
The EU has not banned vape flavors. Read the Tobacco Products Directive and the situation separates into three distinct legal layers.
Layer one, the EU-wide text. The directive lets each member state decide whether flavors are permitted, and the European Commission has not completed its own impact assessment of that law, as the harm-reduction news outlet Clearing the Air summarized in June 2024.[2] No EU-wide vape flavor ban is in force.
Layer two, member states acting on that discretion. The Netherlands is the strictest example to date. Its e-liquid flavor ban took effect on 1 January 2023, built on a restrictive list of 16 permitted flavor-determining ingredients that only enable the production of a tobacco flavor.[5] Producers and retailers could sell existing stock until 1 January 2024; since that date the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) has been enforcing the ban.[5] A whitelist like this is not a flavor palette. It is a tobacco-only recipe book.
Layer three, a proposed EU-wide ban. In June 2024 Latvia and Denmark put proposals for an EU-wide flavor ban before the EPSCO Council.[2] Proposals are not law, but they mark the direction of travel for anyone planning a product line.
The legal read matters because each layer changes a different decision: where you can sell today, what you can formulate today, and what to assume becomes EU-wide later. Reading a headline and concluding “the EU banned vape flavors” gets all three wrong.
The asymmetry: heated tobacco’s flavor door is already shut in the EU
Vape flavors stay a member-state choice. Heated tobacco gets no such room: the EU closed its flavor door at component level.
Delegated Directive (EU) 2022/2100 extends the prohibition on “tobacco products with a characterising flavour or containing flavourings in any of their components such as filters, papers, packages, capsules or any technical features allowing modification of the smell or taste of the tobacco products concerned or their smoke intensity” that already existed for cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco to heated tobacco products.[1] The provisions apply from 23 October 2023.[1]
The definition is the load-bearing part. The amended Article 7(12) defines “heated tobacco product” as “a novel tobacco product that is heated to produce an emission containing nicotine and other chemicals, which is then inhaled by user(s), and that, depending on its characteristics, is a smokeless tobacco product or a tobacco product for smoking.”[1] The boundary sits at classification, not tobacco content: the definition sets no threshold for how much tobacco, or in what form, a stick must carry. Its first requirement is that the product be a tobacco product, which the parent directive, 2014/40/EU, defines as one consisting, even partly, of tobacco. A stick built on tobacco extract still counts; a stick with no tobacco in it never becomes a heated tobacco product.
The same paragraph states the category logic: “Tobacco products other than cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco and heated tobacco products shall be exempted from the prohibitions,” and the Commission may withdraw that exemption category by category through delegated acts, the exact route heated tobacco just took.[1]
Read the drafting as a lawyer reads it. The prohibition has two branches: a product “with a characterising flavour,” and a product “containing flavourings in any of their components such as filters.” Both classic formulation paths are caught on the face of the text: flavor built into reconstituted tobacco sheet, and flavoring added as an external ingredient. The borderline moves get no room either.
Menthol is not a loophole. Menthol cigarettes left the Dutch market on 20 May 2020, the flavor ban has applied to heated tobacco since 23 October 2023, and the Dutch government’s measures page adds that “flavours or aromas may not be added to components of tobacco products, such as filters, paper, capsules and packaging,” a line that also catches click cigarettes.[6] A menthol capsule or a flavored filter hits the components branch head-on, no sensory judgment required. The NVWA monitors compliance with the Tobacco Act.[6]
What stays legal under 2022/2100: two narrow boxes. The category box: tobacco products outside the three named classes keep their exemption until the Commission withdraws it. The recipe box: a heated tobacco stick that adds no flavoring at all stays lawful, since the ban reaches characterizing flavors and added flavorings, not the product class itself. An unflavored stick cannot serve fruit-loyal vapers, and every category-exempt product sits one delegated act from the same treatment.
That is the asymmetry. The vape side is a patchwork with openings; the heated tobacco side is closed at EU level. A brand treating HNB as a flavor safe harbor works from a headline, not the directive. The formulation space left over lies outside the ban’s literal scope, and that space is the next section’s subject.
The gap: botanical base + nicotine + flavors
PMI already launched the product at the center of that space: LEVIA, a heated stick with no tobacco, nicotine on board, tobacco flavors.
The National Committee Against Smoking (CNCT) published the account on 25 October 2023, two days after the ban applied. LEVIA sticks contain no tobacco but a “tobacco-free substrate” infused with nicotine, in flavors of tobacco, menthol, blueberry and peppermint.[4] It names neither the substrate’s material nor whether the nicotine is synthetic or extracted from tobacco: the two details that decide the classification. The only substrate material named in the report is rooibos tea, in BAT’s equivalent sticks. That blank matters: tobacco-derived nicotine sits nearer the ban’s reach than synthetic.
What happened after launch is equally thin, and the thinness is the finding. No source we hold names a country where LEVIA is on sale, or a regulator reclassifying it or forcing changes. The only market named belongs to BAT: its rooibos sticks were already available in Germany, priced at EUR 5.80, when the account was published. CEO Jacek Olczak told investors LEVIA could avoid high taxation and various obligations imposed on the manufacturer’s other tobacco products.[4] PMI was also in talks with regulators in target markets to learn how they planned to classify the product. For a distributor, that silence is the risk itself.
Member states are already moving. Ireland’s TPD transposition regulations, the European Union (Manufacture, Presentation and Sale of Tobacco and Related Products) Regulations, treat herbal heated products under the novel tobacco framework, with notification, labeling and packaging obligations, per a March 2025 TobaccoIntelligence report. That is the template to prepare against: a novel tobacco notification, not the e-cigarette route under TPD Article 20. Where a market has not moved, no settled path exists, so pre-build the product definition documents against that template.
The position is a grey zone, not an exemption: the flavor ban’s text reaches tobacco products, a class the previous section showed a tobacco-free stick never joins.[1] A product line positioned against this definition is detailed in the closing section.
Filling the gap: a vape-flavored herbal HNB line built for that transition
One supplier line is built for exactly this transition, positioned around the gap defined above rather than around a tobacco copy.
Ccobato’s nicotine-containing herbal series runs two tracks: the Black Gold line in tobacco flavor, and the Fruit Flavor line in vape-style flavors, on a botanical base that carries nicotine without tobacco leaf.
The claims attached to the line are stated as checkable.
Patent safety: the electromagnetic induction HNB stick compatible approach is described as FTO-verified, with products sold across 42 countries and zero patent disputes.
Supply chain: the factory covers the full stack from raw materials and sticks through susceptor materials, one partner carrying the whole bill of materials.
Cost: the Ultra-Microcellular Technology process is claimed to keep customer cost about 20% below comparable products, a first-party figure without published comparison parameters.
Performance: stable recognition rates of 90%–100% in production, also first-party.
Compliance support: TPD notification assistance and JFRL laboratory testing are part of the standard service package.
The line’s stated purpose is to take fruit-loyal vapers off the grey market and onto a compliant consumable stream.
The demand: fruit-flavor loyalty tobacco taste cannot carry
Fruit is the demand, and the EU’s official survey says it plainly, though its fieldwork predates the bans that followed.
Special Eurobarometer 506, the European Commission’s survey (fieldwork August-September 2020, published February 2021), covered 28,300 adults. Among monthly vapers in the survey, 48% named fruit flavors like cherry or strawberry and 36% named tobacco, on a multiple-answer question, so the two shares overlap rather than sum to 100%; the report says the subsample is too small for country-level analysis and publishes no margin of error for it.[3]
Age steepens the split. Three quarters of vapers aged 15-24 named fruit and only 22% named tobacco; the 55+ cohort inverts it at 56% tobacco and 18% fruit. The Commission flags both age cells as low-sample (n=109 and n=135), and the base does not split by device type, so disposable vapers, the group hit hardest by the bans, get no separate flavor profile from this source.[3]
Those figures describe pre-ban demand. No EU-wide survey has tracked flavor preference after the bans; the next section shows post-ban behavior that points the same way.
Why does fruit loyalty form at all? A year-long Nicotine & Tobacco Research study of 886 dual users, reported by the industry association IEVA, found that people who start vaping on tobacco flavor quickly switch to fruit.[7] The mechanism is sensory separation: non-tobacco flavors distance vaping from the cigarette’s taste cues, so the flavor anchors the new habit, while tobacco taste replays the exact experience the switcher is leaving.[7]
That mechanism, plus the age gradient, is why whitelist-only assumptions fail. For the fruit-loyal segment, a tobacco-only whitelist vape is the wrong product, and a tobacco-flavored HNB is equally wrong. The mismatch, not the ban itself, creates the opening a vape-flavored heated product on a non-tobacco base can take.
The Netherlands experiment: migration is not automatic
Post-ban behavior points the same way, and the picture is worse than the preference data. The Netherlands ran the flavor-ban experiment first; the results should worry anyone whose plan is “ban happens, users move to my compliant product.”
A 2026 Tobacco Control paper, analyzing Dutch product notifications across 2020–2025, cites two recent studies: over 80% of Dutch e-cigarette users (including adolescents and young adults) use non-permitted vapes, for example, fruity flavors.[5] The ban took effect on 1 January 2023; the NVWA began enforcing it on 1 January 2024.[5] Enforcement tightened, the flavors stayed.
RIVM’s consumer study, published in Tobacco Control in 2026, surveyed pre-ban vapers online, nine months after full implementation: 548 adolescents and young adults (ages 13–24) and 457 adults (25+ years).[8] As a result of the ban, 40% (95% CI 36% to 43%) reduced vaping, and 22% quit entirely.[9] Most consumers (73%) who quit vaping due to the ban did not use a substitution product.[9]
Six per cent of all participants started cigarette smoking and attributed it to the ban.[9] Another 9.1% initiated replacements, and the alternatives are predominantly cigarettes.[9] No respondent in either study moved to heated tobacco; that possible positive evidence stays blank.
Flavor-driven vapers will not accept a tobacco-tasting substitute; they go grey or quit. Nicotine-driven users might take a heated product, but Europe’s HNB users are not the vape crowd. Most HTP use is among former and current tobacco smokers, per a 2021 Lancet Regional Health Europe analysis of the 2020 Eurobarometer (28 countries).[10] Extrapolating one group onto the other is how brands get a compliant line and no takers.
No source supports the migration itself: fruit-flavor vapers accepting a botanical HNB stick. No data shows they would take a vape-flavored heated stick over the grey market, quitting, or cigarettes, as of August 2026. Treat vape-to-HNB migration as a hypothesis to pilot, not a forecast to build on.
Counter-risk: HNB is not a regulatory safe harbor
Is HNB even sellable? 31 countries say no, and Europe is not exempt. Luxembourg, Malta, and Norway are on the list, two of them EU member states, per GSTHR, a harm-reduction knowledge hub funded by Global Action to End Smoking.[11] In some of the 31 the ban also covers manufacture, importation, and distribution.[11]
The open side is bigger. As of 2025, HTPs were legally available in at least 72 countries, with 48.9 million users worldwide in 2024 (range 45.6 to 52.1 million), per a JMIR Public Health study funded by the same Global Action to End Smoking.[12] Survey-based counts from 35 countries show where the users actually are: 10.6 million in Japan, 2.6 million in South Korea, 2.1 million in Italy, 1.0 million in Ukraine, 0.7 million in Germany, five markets holding 78.5% of that survey-based total.[12] The same study cites PMI disclosures on market share: HTPs took 48.5% of PMI’s combined cigarette and HTP business in Japan, 31.8% in Hungary, 28.7% in Lithuania, and 23.9% in Greece.[12]
Legal does not mean flavor-friendly. The EU banned characterising flavors in heated tobacco from 23 October 2023, and the Netherlands applied the same ban from the same date, so a vape-flavored tobacco stick is unlawful across the bloc.[1][6] Where HTPs are allowed, governments usually regulate them as tobacco products: health warnings on packaging, limits on advertising and promotion, flavor restrictions, and taxation.[11] Check the ban list, then the flavor ban, then each market’s version of those four levers, before you stock. HNB is not a safe harbor; it is a market-by-market decision.
Japan: the only decade-scale migration data
Japan is the only market with a decade of HTP at scale, and the headline number is real but needs two footnotes.
In the ten years after heated tobacco products arrived, cigarette sales in Japan fell 52%, per the GSTHR briefing (again, an outlet funded by Global Action to End Smoking).[13] A peer-reviewed analysis in Tobacco Control puts the 2011-2023 decline at 52.6% per capita and 52.7% in total sales.[14] PMI’s own disclosures show what that migration is worth: the smoke-free business took 40% of total net revenues and around 42% of gross profit in 2024, with 38.6 million adult users across 95 markets, and 16 of its 51 factories dedicated to smoke-free production.[15][16]
Footnote one: tax. In 2021 the excise tax on a pack of cigarettes in Japan was more than double the HTP rate, ¥284.9 against ¥131.03.[13] Japan is now dismantling that engine: a two-stage hike in April and October 2026 aligns heated sticks with conventional cigarettes at a unified rate of JPY 15.244 per stick.[17]
Footnote two: who migrated. Research from both independent and industry-sponsored studies finds most HTP users in Japan also smoke cigarettes.[13] These are combustible smokers converting, in a market that tolerated HTP and priced it cheaper. It is not a vape-flavor migration, and it cannot be pasted onto the Dutch scenario as a forecast.
The tax frontier: price is the next dimension to tighten
Flavors were the first lever. The EU’s July 2025 proposal to revise the Tobacco Taxation Directive shows price is the next one: it extends the directive’s scope to new products, including e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and nicotine pouches, covered by new minimum taxes.[18]
Status matters for planning. The Commission presented the proposal in July 2025; in June 2026 the European Parliament rejected its own advisory report, which is not binding because tax files follow a special procedure, so the proposal remains under discussion in the Council, where all 27 member states must agree.[19]
For a distributor, the mechanism matters more than the dates. Minimum taxation lands on the consumable, the stick, rather than the device. That is precisely the recurring-revenue line a razor-and-blade HNB business is built around, so a margin model that ignores the tax trajectory is already out of date.
The business model: a razor-and-blade revenue stream
The device is a one-time sale. The sticks are the cash flow. PMI’s numbers make the point: the smoke-free business took 40% of total net revenues in 2024, and 38.6 million adult users buy consumables month after month.[15]
The consumable has also become the heating hardware in the current induction generation. IQOS ILUMA’s SMARTCORE induction system is completely bladeless: the metal heating element heats the tobacco from within the TEREA stick using induction, so the device inserts nothing into the stick.[20] Every consumable sold is a small piece of heating hardware plus the flavor payload.
Read the business model that way and a brand’s move into HNB means one thing: acquiring a compliant, repeat-purchase revenue stream that a vape flavor ban does not interrupt. That is the asset worth building a product line around, and the reason the patent position on consumables matters as much as the device.
The patent layer: expired mechanics, live product patents
Patent risk in HNB moves by generation, and one famous expiry proves it.
EP0703735B1, the 1995 induction-heating patent assigned to Philip Morris Products, carries the status Expired – Lifetime in Google Patents as of August 2026, with US5613505A in the same family.[21] Mechanism-level induction heating from that era is out of protection. A supplier quoting “the core patent is expired” states a true fact about the wrong layer.
The live patent wall sits one layer up. Our competitive mapping counts 3,000+ HNB patents across PMI, BAT, JTI and KT&G, a first-party figure without published search parameters. Treat it as directional, not independently reproducible. The live filings cluster on product structure: consumable construction, susceptor placement, device-stick interaction. That layer does not expire in one clean sweep like a 1995 mechanism. Each product generation files a fresh round of applications, so the wall rolls forward instead of falling away.
That is why freedom to operate belongs on the same pre-order checklist as regulatory compliance. Patents are territorial, so an FTO answer for one market says nothing about another. Ask any vendor, this one included, for the analysis itself: the jurisdictions it covers, the rights-holders it searched, and who issued it. An FTO claim without that scope is a claim you cannot check.
A distributor’s three-step framework (EU anchor)
A distributor holding vape licenses often finds they do not cover heated sticks. Each member state runs its own classification, permitting and shelf rules, and the announcement-to-enforcement gap is when shelves get claimed.
Step one: requalify the channel, product by product, with two checks per market. Check one, classification against the 2022/2100 definition quoted earlier: any tobacco, even as extract, puts a stick inside the heated tobacco definition; no tobacco keeps it out, and that boundary sets the permits and shelf rules. Getting it wrong means selling a tobacco-classified product on vape-only permits: unlicensed sale, with seizures and delistings the standard response.
Check two, notification duty. Ireland, the example worked through earlier, runs herbal heated products through its novel tobacco framework with notification, labeling and packaging obligations, not the TPD Article 20 e-cigarette route. Whichever route a market applies, the filing lands in the EU-CEG database.[5] No source we track publishes a license table for Germany, France, Spain, Italy or Poland; the two checks are the table.
Step two: manage the transition window. The Netherlands template runs on three dates: the ban took effect on 1 January 2023, existing stock stayed sellable until 1 January 2024, and NVWA enforcement started that day.[5] Turn them into planning slots: announcement-to-effect for locking the compliant SKU, sell-down for shelf negotiations, enforcement start for stocking the replacement. No second worked timeline is available as of August 2026; a distributor should demand those three dates from any market that moves, or a competitor working the dates takes the space.
Step three: qualify the supplier before the product, and break “certification support” into deliverables first. Three questions to put to any supplier: who files the TPD notification, with which authority, and what triggers a re-filing. Name the testing laboratory, such as JFRL, the parameters it covers, and whether reports ship with each batch; pre-build the product definition documents against the classification just checked. Then confirm continuity on consumables, the repeat-purchase stream carrying the margin: a supplier whose paperwork fails mid-run is a supply interruption, not a paperwork issue.
A turnkey vendor that puts those deliverables in scope, from flavor development through delivery and customs clearance, leaves the brand’s team running brand and channel. That is the standard this supplier line holds itself to.
The grey market is your real competitor
Your competitor is not the other compliant brand; it is the grey market that kept over 80% of Dutch vapers on non-permitted fruit vapes, bought through friends, shops, social media and dealers.[5]
The RIVM survey’s largest buyer group, 35.6%, bought in physical shops abroad; the report names no countries.[9] But the Netherlands runs the EU’s strictest whitelist, so the flows run to neighboring markets that have not matched it. They release demand first when enforcement reaches them.
NVWA enforcement began in January 2024; two and a half years in, the 80%+ grey share still holds.[5] That is the enforcement gap measured: 30 months and still open. It is not a loophole closing itself: supply is tightening. Shopify banned vape sales worldwide in July 2026, and Chinese vape exports face mounting enforcement.
Every fruit user the grey market keeps is demand a compliant product could capture. The shelves NVWA cleared in January 2024 are the slot: the brand holding a compliant fruit-capable product converts the displaced demand.
The opposition narrative: expect the ‘circumvention’ charge
“Circumvention” is already the word attached to tobacco-free nicotine sticks, and that word writes next year’s regulation.
CNCT, a French anti-smoking organization, frames LEVIA as an attempt to circumvent EU rules, especially the flavor ban.[4] The same pressure reaches EU level, where member states push for an EU-wide flavor ban.[2] Industry bodies argue the opposite, that flavors help smokers switch.[7]
Note the sourcing before you react: CNCT is an anti-tobacco group, Clearing the Air is a harm-reduction outlet, IEVA is a vape industry association. Each curates its own evidence. We cite no health studies here because that literature is itself the battleground. The takeaway is procedural: write the product definition documents and a response line for the circumvention charge before launch, because the first time you hear it will not be in a friendly room.
FAQ: what distributors ask
Short answers to the questions distributors actually ask. Each one points back to the section that proves it.
Is the EU vape flavor ban already in force?
At EU level, no: member states decide under the Tobacco Products Directive, the Commission’s impact assessment is unfinished, and an EU-wide ban exists only as proposals debated by the EPSCO Council in June 2024, as reported by Clearing the Air, a harm-reduction outlet.[2] In the Netherlands, yes: the 16-ingredient whitelist has applied since 1 January 2023, with NVWA enforcement since January 2024.[5]
Is heated tobacco banned in the EU?
Sale is not banned. Characterising flavors are, at component level: filters, papers, packages, capsules and any technical feature modifying smell or taste, in force since 23 October 2023.[1]
Are herbal heated sticks legal in the EU?
They sit in a grey zone, not an exemption. PMI’s tobacco-free LEVIA line already drew a circumvention charge from CNCT, and member states are folding herbal heated products into tobacco-style frameworks.[4]
What do I need to sell HNB products in European markets?
Requalify the channel, run the announcement-to-enforcement timeline in each market (the Dutch dates are the template), and qualify the supplier’s certification support before committing.[5]
Bottom Line
The bans displaced fruit demand that heated tobacco cannot legally carry: Directive 2022/2100 closes flavorings in any component, filter to capsule.[1] The open slot is a botanical, nicotine-carrying HNB stick in vape flavors. No pilot data proves migration yet. Dutch data trace the slot anyway: 80%+ of vapers still buy banned fruit flavors, and 73% of quitters used no substitute.[5][9] Those 73% are the unfilled slot: every compliant option today is tobacco-tasting or grey.
Start by piloting a market, not a forecast. The brands that move during the enforcement gap get the shelves. Judge the gap per market with the Dutch dates from the framework section: effect, sell-down, enforcement start.[5] The closing signal is a market moving from announcement to enforcement checks. The Dutch gap was still open in August 2026.
Vape brands hit by flavor bans are the customer scene our site lists. Email us or use the inquiry form on ccobato.com and tell us where you sell; we will walk you through product definition and compliance. Ask for the FTO report, the market list and the recognition-rate test data with your inquiry. Free samples go to businesses only, on request.
References
[1] COMMISSION DELEGATED DIRECTIVE (EU) 2022/2100 amending Directive 2014/40/EU as regards the withdrawal of certain exemptions in respect of heated tobacco products. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32022L2100
[2] EXCLUSIVE: European Union countries push for EU-wide flavour ban (Clearing the Air, June 2024; EPSCO Council 21 June 2024, Latvia/Denmark proposals). https://clearingtheair.eu/en/post/exclusive-european-union-countries-push-for-eu-wide-flavour-ban/
[3] Special Eurobarometer 506: Attitudes of Europeans towards tobacco and electronic cigarettes (European Commission, Feb 2021). https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/33761/1/Eurobarometer_2020_cigarettes_ebs_506.pdf
[4] Tobacco Industry Circumvents Heated Tobacco Regulations with Tobacco-Free Refills (National Committee Against Smoking / CNCT, 25 Oct 2023). https://www.generationsanstabac.org/en/actualites/industrie-tabac-contourne-reglementations-autour-du-tabac-chauffe-avec-des-recharges-sans-tabac/
[5] E-liquid flavour ban in the Netherlands: fewer notified e-cigarettes, more with a tobacco flavour (Tobacco Control, Online First, 2026). https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2026/08/16/tc-2026-060246
[6] Government measures to discourage smoking. https://www.government.nl/themes/family-health-and-care/smoking/government-measures-to-discourage-smoking
[7] New Evidence: Flavoured E-Cigarettes Help Smokers Move Away from Smoking (IEVA / eurovape.eu; industry association, reports N&TR study of 886 dual users + Prof Notley comment). https://eurovape.eu/new-evidence-flavoured-e-cigarettes-help-smokers-move-away-from-smoking/
[8] Reduced vaping and smoking prevalence among people using e-cigarettes after implementation of an e-cigarette flavour ban in the Netherlands (Hellmich IM, Havermans A, Pauwels CGGM, Boesveldt S, Talhout R; Tobacco Control, first published 2026-04-01; PubMed 41922174). Semantic Scholar record incl. full abstract. https://doi.org/10.1136/tc-2025-059567
[9] Dutch flavour ban pushed some vapers into smoking, study suggests (Clearing the Air, harm-reduction news outlet; reports RIVM study, Tob Control 2026). https://clearingtheair.eu/en/post/dutch-flavour-ban-pushed-some-vapers-into-smoking-study-suggests/
[10] Prevalence and reasons for use of Heated Tobacco Products (HTP) in Europe: an analysis of Eurobarometer data in 28 countries (Laverty, Vardavas, Filippidis; Lancet Regional Health Europe, 2021; Eurobarometer 93.2, Aug-Sep 2020). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8454644/
[11] Which countries ban the sale of heated tobacco products? (GSTHR FAQ). https://gsthr.org/faq-smoking-and-nicotine/heated-tobacco-products/which-countries-ban-the-sale-of-heated-tobacco-products/
[12] Global Heated Tobacco Product User Estimates, 2014-2024 (JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2026;12:e88761, doi:10.2196/88761). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13094793/
[13] Cigarette sales halved: heated tobacco products and the Japanese experience (GSTHR Briefing Paper). https://gsthr.org/resources/briefing-papers/cigarette-sales-halved-heated-tobacco-products-and-the-japanese-experience/cigarette-sales-halved-heated-tobacco-products-and-the-japanese-experience/
[14] Transformation of the tobacco product market in Japan, 2011–2023 (Cummings KM et al., Tobacco Control, doi:10.1136/tc-2024-058734). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12037862/
[15] Philip Morris International Reports 2024 Fourth-Quarter & Full-Year Results. https://www.pmi.com/investor-relations/press-releases-and-events/press-releases-overview/press-release-details?newsId=28366
[16] Explore PMI’s Global Network – Manufacturing the tobacco sticks (pmiscience.com). https://www.pmiscience.com/en/about/our-network/
[17] Japan hikes tobacco tax (Tobacco Journal International). https://www.tobaccojournal.com/news/japan-hikes-tobacco-tax/
[18] Revision of the Tobacco Taxation Directive (proposal). https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/taxation/excise-duties/excise-duties-tobacco/revision-tobacco-taxation-directive-proposal_en
[19] Could the EU ban smoking? Commission to re-write rules for the next generation (Euronews, 18 Aug 2026). https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/18/could-the-eu-ban-smoking-commission-to-re-write-rules-for-the-next-generation
[20] IQOS ILUMA – SMARTCORE INDUCTION TECHNOLOGY (iqos.com official). https://www.iqos.com/gb/en/iluma-smartcore-induction-technology.html
[21] EP0703735B1 – Inductive heating systems for smoking articles (Google Patents). https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0703735B1/en