{"id":40568,"date":"2026-08-25T14:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T14:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/?p=40568"},"modified":"2026-08-25T14:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T14:46:17","slug":"dutch-online-cigarette-and-vape-ban-fails-to-stop-young-adults-buying-through-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/dutch-online-cigarette-and-vape-ban-fails-to-stop-young-adults-buying-through-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch online cigarette and vape ban fails to stop young adults buying through social media"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Young adults in the Netherlands are continuing to buy cigarettes and vapes through social media three years after the country banned online sales, as official figures show regulators are removing thousands of illegal listings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new survey of 2,000 Dutch people by comparison website Independer found 40 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds reported smoking or vaping, according to Dutch media reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around three quarters of young adults said they saw videos featuring people smoking or vaping on social media, while a third of those said the content had tempted them to smoke or vape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than a quarter of the group exposed to this content also reported buying cigarettes or vapes through social media, despite online sales having been prohibited since July 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings come as data from the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) show illegal tobacco and vape sales have increasingly moved away from conventional websites and onto social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of illegal posts removed<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Netherlands introduced a ban on the online sale of tobacco products, vapes and related products on 1 July 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dutch government states: \u201cOnline sales of tobacco and e-cigarettes have been prohibited since 1 July 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The restriction covers conventional online shops as well as sales through social media, apps and other forms of distance selling. From July this year, the rules were tightened further to explicitly prohibit offering tobacco and vape products remotely, even where a transaction is not completed online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But official enforcement figures suggest sellers have continued to find customers through social platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, the NVWA identified 1,868 violations involving tobacco and related products on social media and had the posts removed. It said the online trade appeared to be shifting increasingly from conventional websites to social media and that violations continued to reappear despite enforcement action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem continued into 2025. Between July 2024 and July 2025, the regulator had 619 social media adverts and 111 adverts on sales platforms removed as part of its enforcement of the country’s ban on flavoured vapes and illegal trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One sales platform separately removed another 1,434 adverts from January 2025 onwards following instructions from the regulator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NVWA said it\u2019s often impossible to identify the people behind illegal social media posts, limiting its ability to take further action against individual sellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

40% of young adults smoke or vape<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The new Independer poll found tobacco and vape use was highest among younger adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 40 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds reported smoking or vaping, falling to 30 per cent among people in their thirties, 17 per cent among over-45s and 10 per cent among those aged 60 and above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The published results don\u2019t provide separate figures for smoking and vaping, however, meaning the 40 per cent cannot be interpreted as either a smoking or vaping prevalence rate. Nor do they establish that seeing content on social media causes people to start using nicotine products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That distinction is important in a country where smoking and vaping are subject to many of the same restrictions despite substantial differences in risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Netherlands has progressively tightened its vaping laws in recent years. Vapes in flavours other than tobacco have been prohibited since January 2024, while supermarkets, restaurants and bars have been banned from selling tobacco and vapes since July 2024. Since 2025, vapes may only be sold through specialist shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enforcement struggles with illegal vape market<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Official figures suggest the restrictions have been difficult to enforce fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between July 2024 and July 2025, the NVWA carried out 701 risk-based inspections of retailers for compliance with the flavour ban and found violations at 291, or 42 per cent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since gaining powers to seize prohibited products in January 2025, the authority has confiscated 235,000 flavoured vapes and 71,000 flavour accessories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The regulator has said its enforcement is now focusing more heavily on unofficial supply routes including social media, street dealers, sales from homes and storage facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new poll suggests those informal channels remain readily accessible to young adults even as legal availability has been progressively restricted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings also come against the Netherlands’ ambition to create a smoke-free generation by 2040. Government policy aims for no young people to smoke by then and for adult smoking prevalence to fall to no more than five per cent.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years after the Netherlands banned online tobacco and vape sales, young adults are still buying through social media, while regulators struggle to identify sellers behind thousands of illegal listings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990002,"featured_media":40569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257],"tags":[340,584,583],"slider":[],"class_list":["post-40568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-netherlands","tag-social-media","tag-vapes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/990002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40576,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40568\/revisions\/40576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40568"},{"taxonomy":"slider","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/slider?post=40568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}