With France pushing ahead with its criminalisation of nicotine pouches despite objections from seven other EU Member States, consumers and health policy advocates have slammed the measure, warning that it will criminalise ordinary Europeans crossing borders with safer nicotine products and push millions of ex-smokers back to cigarettes.
“These measures are a cruel joke on Europe’s smokers,” said Dr Delon Human, leader of Smoke Free Sweden and a former secretary general of the World Medical Association. “Outlawing the very products that help people quit, while deadly cigarettes remain freely available, is public health turned on its head.
“Effectively, the EU is telling Swedes to light up a cigarette for their holiday. It’s like banning seatbelts while raising taxes on airbags.”
The ban means that Swedes, who have achieved Europe’s lowest smoking rates thanks to pouches and snus, will be treated as lawbreakers if they take their products on holiday to France and face huge fines and prison terms. Around 18% of women and 12% of men reported daily or occasional nicotine pouch use in 2022; Swedes make around half a million trips to France every year.
The Swedish Embassy in Paris did not comment on the new law or whether they expected to see an increase in requests for consular assistance for Swedes caught in possession of nicotine pouches They insisted that Swedish citizens in France must follow French law.
“The measure carries disproportionate and punitive consequences for tourists committing a victimless offence, while at the same time abandoning 12 million French smokers who deserve access to safer alternatives” said Robert Casinge, editor of pouchforum.eu.
The consequences aren’t limited to Swedes. A smoker who quits in Luxembourg with pouches would also become a criminal simply by stepping over the border into France. About 126,000 French residents commute to Luxembourg every day for work.
The ban, due to kick in on April 1 2026, comes in the wake of leaked Brussels proposals to impose an EU-wide minimum tax on safer nicotine products, which will result in a 700% increase on pouches for Swedes.
“Instead of celebrating Sweden’s achievement, the EU and France are punishing smokers who switch to safer alternatives,” said Dr. Human. “These bans and punitive taxes will drive people back to cigarettes, the most harmful form of nicotine. Europe is on the brink of a public health disaster of its own making. Instead of copying Sweden’s model, governments are turning their backs on science and common sense.”
Partik Strömer, Secretary General of the Association of Swedish Snus Manufacturers,was scathing about the ban. “If France does not want to adhere to the basic principles on free movement of goods, including the right for Swedish citizens to use less harmful products than cigarettes on vacation, then maybe France should just leave the European Union?”
Peter Beckett, Clearing the Air’s founder and a pouch user based in Belgium, has serious concerns. “I have to drive to and through France for work and to visit family several times a year” he said. “What do they expect me to do? Buy a pack of Gitanes and a beret at the border?”
