The Netherlands: plans to charge 10 euros per package
Smoking is becoming less and less normal in the Netherlands. In 2021, Lidl became the first supermarket in the country to stop selling tobacco products. They were preceded by drugstores, which already put an end to this in 2019. It’s becoming harder and harder to find a place that sells cigarettes, which discourages smoking even further. The number of smoking Dutch people decreased from 26 percent in 2014 to 20 percent in 2020.
The price increases also contribute to the declining percentage of smokers in this country. The price is not as high as in the United Kingdom, but a pack of cigarettes costs an average of 8.20 euros (9.28 USD). This is three times what it cost in the year 2000, when you only had to pay 3.21 euros (3.63 USD) on average. The plan of the Dutch government is to increase the price of a pack of cigarettes to 10 euros (11.32 USD) by 2023.