Contents

Nanny State Index 2025

Summary

Welcome to the sixth edition of the Nanny State Index, a league table of the best and worst places to be a consumer of food, alcohol, soft drinks and nicotine. As always, there is little in the way of good news to share. Governments continue to squeeze drinkers, smokers and vapers dry while punishing them with unnecessary and ineffective regulation in the name of ‘public health’.

People who vape have been under particular attack since the last edition of the index was published in 2023. The number of countries that tax e-cigarette fluid has risen from 15 to 20 and there are more vape taxes in the pipeline, notably in the UK and Ireland. The right to vape indoors continues to be eroded, with 19 countries now banning e-cigarette use wherever smoking is banned.

Of the 29 countries in the index, only Turkey bans e-cigarettes outright, but a growing number of countries have used flavour bans as a backdoor route to prohibition. Eight countries now have such a ban, including Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands. Belgium became the first EU country to ban disposable vapes in January 2025, with France and the UK expected to follow suit.

Nicotine pouches have become popular in recent years and so, inevitably, they have attracted the attention of moralising campaigners. Despite containing no tobacco and being as safe as a nicotine product is ever likely to be, they are effectively or explicitly banned in Germany, Belgium and Cyprus and regulated so heavily in Latvia and the Netherlands that they might as well be banned. France and Lithuania are now looking at outright prohibition of these products.

There has been no change at the top or the bottom of the league table since the 2023 edition. The biggest mover is Slovakia which has traditionally been near the bottom (more liberal) end of the table, but has shot up to 17th place thanks to a new vape tax and some deeply regressive tobacco taxes. Belgium and the Netherlands continue their march up the table, largely thanks to their government’s obsessive war against low-risk nicotine products. The UK has returned to the top 10 as a result of its very high scores in the tobacco, food and soft drink categories, and it is set to climb higher with a slew of anti-vaping and anti-obesity policies.

Germany, Luxembourg and several southern European countries remain at the more liberal end of the table, but they are far from perfect and are broadly getting worse. Germany has been clamping down on tobacco advertising and has a vape tax which is set to become more punitive every year. The Spanish government has already introduced a vape tax and is now proposing a de facto ban on nicotine pouches and a de jure ban on e-cigarette flavours. Luxembourg also has a vape tax and has still not legalised heated tobacco.

The least said about the countries at the top of the table, the better. Turkey, Lithuania and Finland have high scores across the board and are particularly aggressive towards drinkers and vapers. Hungary’s only saving grace is its relatively low taxes on alcohol while Ireland performs badly on every category except e-cigarettes.

We always celebrate slivers of liberalisation when we find them but they have been in very short supply in the last two years. One of the few instances of deregulation came in Finland where the government’s monopoly on the sale of beer has finally been broken. Finland, along with Italy, has also legalised nicotine pouches since the last edition was published. Sweden lowered the tax on snus as part of a deliberate strategy to get smokers to switch. Apart from that, all the movement has been in an illiberal direction. Until politicians see coercive paternalism as a mark of shame rather than a badge of honour, Europe’s downward spiral will only continue.

The Nanny State Index is always evolving to keep up with the crazy schemes devised by the ‘public health’ lobby to interfere in the lives of citizens. The most significant change since the last edition is that we have expanded the e-cigarette category to include heated tobacco, snus and nicotine pouches. These reduced-risk products now make up the ‘safer nicotine’ category while the tobacco category has been slimmed down to include only combustible tobacco.

All the data in the index is correct as of 1 February 2025, but if the plans of various governments go ahead, Denmark will have an indoor vaping ban and Slovenia will have an e-cigarette flavour ban by the time you read this. The UK is expected to have an extensive ban on ‘less healthy’ food advertising by the end of 2025, as well as a ban on disposable vapes.
The Nanny State Index is a huge collaborative project which involves gathering and checking over a thousand pieces of data. As always, we thank our friends and partners across Europe who make it possible, and raise a toast to people everywhere who are fighting the uphill battle against the nanny state.

Download PDF

PDF Viewer

NSI 2025