It’s time to put a stop to the creative and cunning tobacco and nicotine manufacturers who are keen on introducing new nicotine products to the Danish market.
That’s the stance of Minister of Health Sophie Løhde (Venstre):
»The development of new nicotine products is incredibly rapid, and the industry is inventive in all the wrong ways. They are trying to secure their future by constantly cultivating a lucrative market where children and young people become addicted to their product.«
»We have an obligation to respond to this,« she says.
Therefore, she wants to introduce a new notification requirement that will place new nicotine products in a six-month quarantine. This should give authorities time to assess whether new requirements need to be adopted before the products hit the market in Denmark.
Specifically, this means that producers must notify the Danish Safety Technology Authority (Sikkerhedsstyrelsen) about new nicotine products six months before they can be sold on the Danish market.
According to the minister, this will ensure that new products cannot be designed to bypass existing laws.
Outdated legislation
Currently, new nicotine products must also be notified to the Danish Safety Technology Authority, but the difference is that they can be sold simultaneously. According to the minister, this means that the law is always one step behind because addictive products can reach consumers before it is possible to regulate their sale.
»Much of the legislation dates back to when there were only cigarettes, cheroots, and cigars. Today, the nicotine market is entirely different, and the law is not equipped to handle the very creative and inventive producers,« says Sophie Løhde, mentioning examples of products like nicotine pouches, puff bars, and small discreet nicotine strips that dissolve in the mouth.
While these are not yet available in Denmark, you only need to look as far as Sweden to find them.
Hvis de kommer på markedet i Danmark, vil der ifølge ministeren være tvivl om, hvor de skal placeres i henhold til den nuværende lov. Grænsen for nikotinindhold i nikotinposer vil eksempelvis ikke give mening for nikotinstrips og således tillade strips med potentielt meget store mængder af det vanedannende stof.
If they arrive at the Danish market, according to the minister, there will be uncertainty about where they should be categorized under the current law. The limit on nicotine content for pouches, for instance, wouldn’t make sense for strips and would thus allow strips with potentially very high amounts of the addictive substance.
Producer firms are always ahead
The proposal is welcomed by Lotus Sofie Bast, a senior researcher in tobacco prevention at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). She describes it as a necessity if we are to succeed in stemming the flow of new nicotine products.
»Today, it feels like we are desperately trying to prevent and regulate the market while there are producers on the other side who are always a bit ahead and are trying to find loopholes in the law by developing new products,« she says.
One example, according to her, is nicotine pouches. These small white pouches are used in the same way as snuff (snus) but are legal to sell because they do not contain tobacco.
Just before the turn of the year, a new law was passed tightening the rules for nicotine pouches. Among other measures, a cap was placed on the nicotine content in each pouch.
By that time, however, they had already hooked many children and young people. In 2024, 12.6 percent of 15-29-year-olds used the pouches daily or occasionally, a nearly 40 percent increase compared to 2020. This is shown by the annual §Røg survey from SDU.
Inger Schroll-Fleischer, the director of the industry association Nikotinbranchen, is not in favor of the proposal. She argues that rather than needing new legislation, better enforcement of the existing laws is what’s required.
»The illegal market is practically operating freely today. The authorities should focus more on that.«
In addition to the notification requirement, new warnings will be created for product packaging, focusing on the harmful effects of the products, similar to cigarette packs, rather than the current warnings that simply state nicotine is addictive.
The plan is for the notification requirement law to be adopted by the spring of 2026.
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