The Dutch flavour ban was meant to protect public health. Instead, it exposes a deeper flaw in Brussels’ thinking: You cannot regulate demand out of existence.
Brussels has long been tempted by a simple regulatory instinct: If a product is politically problematic, restrict it — and if necessary, ban it.
The Netherlands has now tested that instinct on vaping. The results should serve as a warning, not a model.
In 2024, the Dutch government introduced a sweeping ban on all non-tobacco vape flavours.
The objective was clear: Reduce youth uptake by removing the products seen as most attractive to younger consumers.
It was a policy built on the widely cited fear of a “gateway effect”, the idea that vaping leads young people toward smoking.
But reality has not followed the script.
Instead of reducing use, the policy appears to have triggered precisely the dynamics it was meant to prevent.
Youth vaping in the Netherlands has more than doubled, rising from 3.7 per cent to 7.6 per cent in the space of a year.
The explanation is straightforward. Demand did not disappear when flavours were banned. It simply moved.
The legal market shrank sharply. Adult vaping declined, but not because consumers lost interest.
Rather, they were pushed out of regulated channels.
Today, a significant share of users report sourcing products from abroad, through illicit online sellers, or even via non-compliant domestic retailers.
In other words, the state has lost control of the very market it sought to regulate.
This is the first lesson of the Dutch experience: Prohibition does not eliminate demand. It displaces it — often into less transparent, less controllable, and more dangerous channels.
But there is a second, more troubling consequence. Smoking is rising again.
Cigarette consumption in the Netherlands increased in 2024, with tens of millions of additional cigarettes consumed. Even more concerning, more than a quarter of former vapers report either returning to smoking or increasing their cigarette use following the ban.
For years, European policymakers have cautiously accepted that vaping can play a role in reducing the harm associated with smoking. The Dutch policy breaks with that logic, removing alternatives that many adult smokers rely on.
Brussels now faces a choice. It can treat the Dutch experience as a success and double down on prohibition. Or it can recognise it as a warning sign.
Public health policy is too important to be driven by wishful thinking. If Europe wants to reduce smoking, it must ensure that viable alternatives remain available within a regulated framework.
You cannot ban demand out of existence. And when policymakers try, it is the public that pays the price.
Tim Andrews is Director of Consumer issues at Prohibition Does not Work
