Norway: Store Chains to Phase Out Cigarettes

Two leading convenience store chains in Norway will phase out cigarette sales, reports The Local.

Reitan Convenience Norway, which operates Narvesen and 7-Eleven stores, intends to stop selling tobacco products at all its locations by 2026.

“We already see a declining demand for cigarettes and want to contribute to phasing this out in the long term,” Anniken Staubo at Reitan Convenience Norway told E24.

Earlier, Reitan Convenience Sweden announced that it would also stop selling cigarettes.

“Just like Reitan Convenience Sweden, we are also not going to take in new products and brands in this category from 2026,” Staubo said.

According to Reitan, the phaseout is part of the company’s overall sustainability strategy.

“There are major environmental and social sustainability challenges in the production of tobacco. We plan for a gradual phasing out of cigarettes in our range and follow the development of any new changes in rules and laws,” Staubo said.

Norgesgruppen, which owns Norway’s other prominent convenience store chain, Joker, said it had no plans to phase out cigarette sales.

Since 2017, the number of young people who smoke daily in Norway has fallen while there has been a steady increase in the number of people using snus.

In 2023, 16 percent of Norwegians aged between 16 and 74 used snus daily compared with just 7 percent of the same demographic who smoked cigarettes every day, according to Statistics Norway.