proposed amendment to the law
The proposed amendment to the law includes an increase in excise duty on tobacco products, which will now extend to safer nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, liquids, and tobacco heaters. The aim of the tax increase is to limit their price accessibility.
The assumption is straightforward—higher prices are meant to effectively discourage consumers, particularly younger people.
According to the government, the existing bans on selling nicotine products to minors have not always been successful. As rp.pl reports, “Research shows that 30% of students aged 15-19 regularly use e-cigarettes, and 60% have tried them at least once. One of the ways to curb this trend is to increase prices and impose excise taxes on devices for both e-cigarette liquids and innovative products.”
excise tax changes
Vaping devices themselves will also be subject to excise tax. The new definition divides the devices into two categories. The first includes e-cigarettes, whether disposable or reusable, and the second category covers tobacco heaters.
The excise tax on the devices has been set at 40 PLN per unit, while the excise tax on liquids is expected to be 1.80 PLN per milliliter. For consumers, this translates to an increase of around 50 PLN per device, and for 10ml liquid containers, prices are projected to reach 23.07 PLN in 2025 and 33.43 PLN in 2027.
Several questions arise: Will people quit smoking? Will the price increase help them break the habit? Does this mean that individuals trying to switch from smoking to safer nicotine alternatives will return to traditional cigarettes?
Will young people stop being interested just because prices have risen? Will the problem of smoking disappear because of the excise tax increase? The likely answer to all these questions is “probably not.”
We can already anticipate the consequences of such high increases—the inevitable rise of the black market. We cannot predict what illegal disposable products will be filled with, nor the composition of liquids available to those seeking cheaper alternatives.
