Estonia Warned Nicotine Restrictions Will Fuel Black Market and Increase Smoking

Prohibition Does Not Work, an international network of think tanks dedicated to evidence-based nicotine policy, has urged the Estonian Government to withdraw proposed restrictions on nicotine pouches that would effectively eliminate most legal products and drive consumers toward cigarettes and illicit suppliers.

“Estonia is preparing to repeat a policy it has already tried and already seen fail,” said Prohibition Does Not Work spokesman Tim Andrews. “After Estonia banned most e-cigarette flavours, almost 60 percent of vapers continued using prohibited flavours through do-it-yourself mixing, local sellers, online suppliers, and cross-border purchases.”

The proposal would restrict legal pouch flavours to tobacco and menthol and impose a nicotine limit of 4 milligrams per gram, which would outlaw over 80% of the current market.

“This is not a moderate product standard. It is a de facto ban on almost the entire existing market,” Andrews said. “A pouch that is too weak to satisfy an adult smoker. Or is unavailable in a flavour they find appealing, will not help that smoker quit. It will encourage heavier use, dual use, a return to cigarettes, or purchases from illegal suppliers offering stronger products.”

Andrews added that Germany provides the clearest warning:

“Germany effectively prohibited legal nicotine-pouch sales, but adult use increased approximately eightfold. As many as 1.4 million consumers were pushed into an unregulated market, and illegal sales reached an estimated 444 million pouches worth more than US$114 million in 2024.”

“Products containing up to 150 milligrams of nicotine per pouch remained available, while meaningful age verification was largely absent. The black market also failed to protect minors. In 2023, 5.4 percent of German teenagers had tried nicotine pouches, rising among 16- and 17-year-olds to 15.2 percent of boys and 10.3 percent of girls. Prohibition removed ordinary regulated products but left the strongest products in the hands of sellers outside the law.”

“By contrast, Sweden has maintained broad access to snus and nicotine pouches and now has Europe’s lowest daily smoking rate. Sweden shows what happens when smokers are given alternatives that actually work.”  

Andrews concluded “Prohibition does not remove demand. It removes safeguards, weakens age controls, strengthens illegal suppliers, and leaves cigarettes protected from safer competition. The choice before Estonia is not between nicotine pouches and no nicotine pouches. It is between a regulated market and an illicit one. As such we call on the Estonian Government to act in accordance with overwhelming international evidence and withdraw the Draft Act.”

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Read our submission here.