Budget duty on vapes to increase price by €1.30

Refill cartridges used for vaping will increase by at least €1.30, according to data from the Budget 2025 financial estimates and details found in the Budget Measures Implementation Bill.

The Bill, which MPs have to pass to legislate the budget’s fiscal measures, states that cartridges and refills for electronic cigarettes containing nicotine, as well as nicotine-free e-liquid cartridge, will increase €0.13 per ml.

That means that starter cartridges of 10ml, will increase by €1.30 – adding quite a hefty 26% increase on vaping cartridges that retail at €4.99.

This is the first time that Malta is introducing excise duty on vaping, which has climbed in popularity over the last years.

However, the exchequer estimates that the duty will net only €500,000 in its first year of levying. It is a far cry from the millions in revenue that machine-made cigarettes and rolling tobacco generate.

Duty on cigarettes, which has stayed constant in the last 10 years, has increased from €80 million in 2015, to over €92 million in 2023. During the COVID year of 2020, this revenue took a 10% hit, largely reflecting the business shutdown of March 2020, and the subsequent tourism reduction of the season.

A less noticeable switch to tobacco might have occurred over this period, where smokers might have been attracted by the prospect of a lower spend on tobacco. Rolling tobacco has been gaining traction in Malta’s smoking market, rising by 60% in 2019 in terms of duties received by the state, from €4 million to €6.5m. Today, rolling tobacco generates duties of over €7.8 million.

Elsewhere in the world, roll-your-tobacco use has grown amongst teens, as even popular cigarette brands started producing their RYO tobacco, as well as using smaller pouches of tobacco that keep the price low.

RYO sales rose in Europe from 53,000 tonnes in 2000 to 82,000 tonnes in 2015, with the continent home to the nine largest RYO markets in the world. RYO is particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where smoking prevalence in 2019 was 14.1% according to the International Tobacco Control Project.

The rise in e-cigarette use in Malta has also been fuelled by the increasing availability of disposable vapes, which make up the vast majority of vape sales and are sold in such creative flavours as ‘pink lemonade’, ‘bubble-gum’ and ‘watermelon ice’, which critics say make them more attractive to younger people.

The jury is still out on how safer an alternative vapes are to traditional cigarettes. Today disposable vapes can be found virtually at every convenience store across the island, and young people vaping away with coloured sticks have become a common occurrence.