Tag: Norway

  • Norway: Store Chains to Phase Out Cigarettes

    Norway: Store Chains to Phase Out Cigarettes

    Photo: Tupungato

    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.

  • Snus Use at Record High in Norway

    Snus Use at Record High in Norway

    Photo: uskarp2

    Daily snus use in Norway has nearly doubled in a decade, reports Norway Today, citing figures released by Statistics Norway (SSB). Nearly 15 percent of the population consumed snus daily in 2021 compared with 8 percent 10 years ago.

    The proportion of daily snus users is at the highest level ever, jumping to 15 percent in 2021, according to SSB consultant Sindre Mikael Haugen.

    Figures show that 21 percent of men use snus on a daily basis while the figure was 8 percent for women.

    Meanwhile, the number of people who smoke daily decreased slightly. Some 8 percent of 16-year-olds to 74-year-olds stated that they light up daily compared to 9 percent in 2020.

    Women (9 percent) were more likely to smoke daily than men (6 percent). While Baby Boomers (55-year-olds to 64-year-olds) smoke most, this group also experienced the greatest decline in smoking rates recently. Only 14 percent of this age group smoke compared to 17 percent in 2020.

  • EU in denial over snus

    EU in denial over snus

    The uptake of snus in Norway is being credited with almost eliminating cigarette smoking among young people living there.
    In a note published on its website today, the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) said that government figures showed the incidence of smoking among women aged 16-24 was down from 30 percent in 2001 to 0.1 percent, while the incidence of smoking among young men was down from 29 percent to three percent.
    The NNA said that the fall in smoking among Norway’s young people did not appear to be the result of their switching to vaping because nicotine-containing electronic-cigarettes were only now being legalised.
    A more likely explanation seems to be presented by a sharp increase that has occurred in the use of snus. During 2008-14, snus use among young women grew from five percent to 14 percent.
    In neighbouring Sweden, where snus is also legal, 20 percent of the population use snus and there the adult smoking rate has fallen to five percent.
    Last month the European Court of Justice held a hearing on whether the EU ban on snus outside Sweden should be lifted, an action that has been supported by the NNA.
    Its trustee Professor Gerry Stimson was quoted as saying that any reasonable person looking at the spectacular graph for smoking among young Norwegians would be struck by how the fall accelerated after snus became available in 2002.
    “This is no fluke,” he said. “The end of smoking is in sight in Norway and Sweden as people choose far safer snus instead.
    “So reasonable people will ask why the UK government decided to urge the European Court of Justice to maintain the snus ban in the rest of the EU.”
    His comments were echoed by the smoking-substitutes expert Dr. Konstantinos Farsalinos who said there was absolutely no doubt that access to snus in Sweden and Norway had played a crucial role in the rapid reduction of their smoking rates.

  • Norwegians turn to snus

    Norwegians turn to snus

    The incidence of daily tobacco smoking has halved in Norway during the past decade, according to a story by Terje Solsvik for Reuters citing Statistics Norway figures.
    For the first time, last year the incidence of snus use was greater than that of smoking.
    Among Norway’s adult population, 11 percent were daily smokers in 2017, a fall of one percentage point from the figure for the previous year, and down from 22 percent in 2007.
    Meanwhile, the incidence of snus use rose to 12 percent in 2017 from 10 percent in 2016. Data was not available for 2007.

  • Packaging challenge fails

    Packaging challenge fails

    Swedish Match has lost a court case it filed against Norway’s government over recently-imposed restrictions on the packaging of snus, according to a Reuters story.

    The company had asked for a temporary injunction against regulations that the government imposed to standardize tobacco-product packaging.

    The government argued that the new rules on packaging had been drawn up in the interests of public health.

  • Neutral-packaging challenge

    Neutral-packaging challenge

    Swedish Match is taking the Norwegian state to court as it seeks an injunction to delay, in respect of snus, the introduction of what is being referred to as ‘neutral’ tobacco packaging, according to a story in thelocal.no quoting an NTB news agency report.

    A law, which came in to effect on July 1, requires all tobacco companies to offer all their tobacco products in only neutral [standardized or plain] packaging by July 1, 2018.

    But Swedish Match wants a temporary injunction to be imposed in respect of snus.

    The company, which is due in court on Monday, claims that the requirement set down by the Norwegian government is in breach of EEC free trade rules, and that the deadline for the new packaging must therefore be delayed until the EEC issue has been resolved.

    “Regulation that constitutes such a strong intervention as standardized packaging is not in proportion to the possible health risks associated with snus,” Swedish Match spokesperson Patrik Hildingsson told the VG newspaper earlier this year.

    But Norway’s minister for health Bent Høie told the newspaper that he was not surprised by lawsuits from tobacco companies in the wake of the regulation introduced on July 1.

    “They did it in Australia, France and the United Kingdom, and lost everywhere,” Høie told VG.

  • Fewer smokers, more snuffers in Norway

    Norway’s smoking tobacco tax revenue last year, at NOK7.3 billion, was down by NOK170 million on that of 2011 and down by NOK750 million on that of 2009, according to an Esmerk Norwegian News story.

    The decline was attributed to the fall that has occurred in the number of daily smokers, which, according to the Norwegian Directorate of Health, now accounts for 16 percent of the population, down from 21 percent in 2009.

    But as the number of smokers has been falling, the number of smokeless tobacco users has been rising: from 6 percent in 2009 to 9 percent last year.