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The UK's new vaping duty doesn't touch nicotine pouches — for now

Vaping Products Duty went live on 1 October at £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid. Nicotine pouches are outside its scope entirely, leaving pouches untaxed while vapes carry the excise bill.

PouchDaily Desk·
The UK's new vaping duty doesn't touch nicotine pouches — for now
UKVaping Products DutyHMRCTobacco and Vapes Actregulation

The UK's Vaping Products Duty went live on 1 October, and the first thing to know about it is what it doesn't do: it does not tax nicotine pouches. The duty applies to vaping liquid, not to pouches — a distinction that leaves pouches as the major oral nicotine format carrying no UK excise duty at all.

What took effect

The duty is charged at a flat £2.20 per 10ml of vaping liquid — including nicotine-free liquid — on top of VAT. It is owed by manufacturers producing vaping products in the UK, importers bringing them in, and warehousekeepers storing duty-suspended inventory. Retailers aren't directly liable, though the cost will reach wholesale prices.

There's a transition window: existing stock without the required duty stamp can still be sold through 31 March 2027. From 1 April 2027, every vaping product on a UK shelf needs a valid duty stamp, and retailers caught selling unstamped stock after that can face penalties up to £10,000, seizure of stock, or in the most serious cases criminal prosecution. HMRC expects the duty to raise more than £550 million a year by 2030-31.

The legal scope is narrow and explicit: per the government's own policy paper, the duty applies to "vaping liquid which contains nicotine and either or both glycerine and glycol or any liquid that is intended to be vapourised by a vape." Nothing in that definition covers a pouch.

Why it matters for pouches

For now, the UK's strictest nicotine tax hits a product pouches compete with, not pouches themselves. A 10ml bottle of vape liquid now carries £2.20 in excise; a can of pouches carries none. Vape prices are already moving, and the industry's trade body UKVIA argues the tax will push some vapers toward smoking or the black market. Pouches just got a relative price advantage in the UK market.

That advantage isn't a permanent feature. The Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 brought pouches firmly into UK nicotine regulation elsewhere — from 29 October 2026, selling any nicotine product, pouches included, to under-18s becomes a criminal offence, alongside bans on free samples and promotional discounts. And in its response to the duty consultation, HMRC announced it will develop a Nicotine Approval Scheme, a supply-control system whose policy work explicitly counted nicotine pouch manufacturers among the businesses affected. A future scheme that controls the supply of nicotine could reshape how pouches are sold in the UK, and HMRC has said a technical consultation on it will follow.

So the fair reading of 1 October is: pouches dodged the first tax, they're inside the new sales rules from 29 October, and a second supply-control regime is being built that will touch them directly.

For readers comparing prices across UK retailers, PouchFinder lists ZYN's UK range.

SOURCES