News item | 12-03-2025 | 15:30
Strengthening enforcement on illegal vapes, start preventing vapen and stopping stimulating vapen. That is the core of the action plan against Vapen that State Secretary Vincent Karremans (Youth, Prevention and Sport) offers today to the Lower House. Due to the actions, the popularity of Vapen among young people and the illegal trade in vapes must be reduced. The NVWA gets structurally more money for enforcement, new legal powers and will hand out higher fines to tackle illegal vapes harder.
Nicotine after heroin and crack the most addictive drug
State Secretary Vincent Karremans: “The problem with vaping young people is very serious. A quarter of the young people between 12 years old and the 16 years have ever fapeted. And 1 in 7 even does it monthly. Because nicotine after heroin and crack is the most addictive drug that exists, Vapes are strongly addictive. Nicotine damages the developing brain and can lead to a persistent addiction at a young age. That is very serious in itself, but it also makes you more susceptible to other addictions. I therefore do what I can do to tackle this problem. “
Tackling illegality: more enforcers and powers NVWA
To tackle illegal trade, the NVWA will structurally receive € 3 million per year. This allows them to use more enforcers and invest in innovative enforcement. Fines are also increased and the NVWA is given more legal powers to be able to maintain more efficiently. An example of this is that not only the online sale, but also simply offering Vapes online is prohibited. The enforcement on the online prohibition is therefore a lot more efficient for the NVWA, because then it is no longer necessary to proven that an online purchase has taken place.
Karremans also works on a bill in which keeping vapes with flavors in stock is prohibited. So that sellers no longer get away with it when large quantities (illegal) vapes are found, but are not visibly sold. In enforcement is collaborating more intensively between VWS, NVWA and Customs, but also with large municipalities such as Amsterdam. It is explored whether municipal boas can be used in enforcement on illegal trade in VAPES.
Start preventing: Get rid of relatively innocent image
To prevent young people from starting with vapen as much as possible, we have to do something wrong with the relatively innocent image. Vapes are not innocent and certainly not for young people. In order to deal with this unjustified image, campaign activities aimed at parents of high school students about the harmfulness of Vapes this year. To ensure that Vapes are not sold in places where children come, Vapes may only be sold in specialty shops from 2026.
Stopping stimulating: Better Stophulp
To further stimulate stops among vaping young people, the Trimbos Institute will receive additional resources in 2025 to bundle the available knowledge about stopping vapen and thereby making the stop processes better match the needs of young people. The ikstopnu.nl website will also be expanded with knowledge that experts have collected about Vapen. The cabinet will be committed to successful initiatives in schools to help young people stop vapen distributing to other schools.