Nicotine Pouches Banned In The Netherlands

A dark day for Nicotine Pouch users dawned in the Netherlands on April 21st 2023, when the Dutch Government made the formal announcement that they would be BANNING the sale of Nicotine Pouches in the Netherlands.

This is something that has been discussed in previous times, with the regulations on Nicotine Pouches already being fairly strict with the amount of Nicotine allowed in Nicotine Pouches being a very low amount compared to what other countries permit, but now they have acted upon this further by implementing the complete ban on the sale of Nicotine Pouches in the country.

In this article, I’m going to take a look at the statement released by the Dutch Government, as well as looking at the fall out from this huge news, and why this potentially is going to cause more harm than good to the patrons of Netherlands who are wanting to quit smoking.

Dutch Government vs Nicotine Pouches

As mentioned, there has been an ongoing battle between the Government and their regulations on Nicotine Pouches, that stems back a few years when the first regulations were issued on the products.

The regulations on Nicotine Pouches were relatively harsh, where no more than 0.035mg of Nicotine could be put inside each individual pouch, which is a considerable amount less than what is permitted in Nicotine Pouches in other countries around Europe, and back in January a public consultation was launched with the intention from the Government being to fully ban the sale of Nicotine Pouches in the country.

Their reasonings for this was to eliminate the prospect of nicotine free alternatives to smoking being readily available to minors, as well as being attractive. They also have the same mentality when it comes to vape juice as well, with the Dutch Government imposing a total ban on flavoured vape juice effective from July of this year, with tobacco only flavours being available instead of the various flavours currently seen on shelves.

It feels a bit like the Dutch Government have a bit of an unneeded vendetta against tobacco free alternatives such as e-liquid, vaping and of course Nicotine Pouches which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me, as these are crucial tools to people who wish to quit smoking and keep it that way, so if they are removed, then surely the smoking rates will start to increase?

So what did the Dutch Government have to say on this topic of banning Nicotine Pouches? Let’s take a look at the statement released on that fateful Friday.

The Ban Comes Into Effect

Health Deputy Minister Maarten Van Ooijen was the person who delivered the statement announcing the Government’s plans to completely ban the sale of Nicotine Pouches, and he said the following;

“The tobacco industry keeps launching new products that make it easy for young people to come into contact with nicotine”

“This is bad, because nicotine is addictive and harmful. That’s why I’m glad we will now treat these products the same as tobacco products,” he said.

Do you spot the problem in that statement? There’s something so glaringly wrong within there that really doesn’t sit well with me, and that’s the fact that he has declared Nicotine as “harmful”

If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you will know full well that Nicotine is indeed highly addictive, but it certainly is not harmful. There has not been any proven evidence published to show that Nicotine has caused harm to a person, and it certainly has not been responsible for a person’s death like what smoking is.

Nicotine is not harmful, there’s not even an argument about it, because it isn’t! Many people believe that Nicotine is one of the many harmful chemicals found in cigarette smoke, but this just isn’t true. And what’s really frustrating here within this statement, is the fact that they say that young people will come into contact with nicotine, and that this is bad and nicotine pouches will now be treated the same as tobacco products, but these actual tobacco products such as cigarettes and rolling tobacco they speak of remain to be freely sold in the country? I don’t get it!

They deem that this ban will make it easier to uphold the rules that were previously in place with the restriction of the volume of nicotine allowed, so that there wouldn’t be the risk of more nicotine being put in these pouches and flouting the regulations so the Government obviously thinks that banning them completely was the right thing to do, but was it really?

A Blow Delivered To Users Of Nicotine Pouches

This banning of Nicotine Pouches is a completely sucker punch to people who have been using Nicotine Pouches previously, and to people who may have been considering using them in an effort to get them off of smoking cigarettes.

These are classed as an “unofficial” form of Nicotine Replacement Therapy because they offer Nicotine to the user without having to smoke cigarettes and can help them move away from smoking which they may be wanting to do. The same applies to vape juice as well, people heavily lean on flavoured vape juice to keep them away from wanting to smoke and with that being banned from July, surveys have been conducted amongst current vapers within the country of the Netherlands and users of flavoured vape juice admit that they would likely revert back to smoking if they couldn’t get what they needed, or resort to black market sellers to illicitly obtain their e-liquid.

Banning things like Nicotine Pouches and flavoured E-Liquid is really counterproductive in my eyes, as whilst this may limit what is available to young people, it also limits what is available to adults who are of legal smoking/vaping age and who may be requiring these things as essential tools to stop them from continuing or reverting back to smoking.

With these bans, it’s only going to be a one way street in my opinion that smoking rates will then start to creep back up in the Netherlands. In 2020, it’s reported that 20% of the adult population were smokers, and that this had significantly decreased over the previous decade where it sat in the mid 30% range. And you can’t help but feel the promotion and use of E-Cigarettes as well as Nicotine Pouches which started seeing a rise during this time period played a crucial part.

So with the banning of these “tobacco free” alternatives for Nicotine, you can’t help but think that the smoking rates will begin increasing due to the fact that soon there will be limited alternatives on the market for people to use and get away from tobacco.

Fortunately, there has not been any banning of Nicotine Pouches or even discussion of it happening here in the UK, so you can still buy your Nicotine Pouches from us here at Snusmail and get them delivered straight to your door!