Scientific-technical support activities to DG TAXUD-C-2 on the option to include e-cigarettes within the scope of excisable goods for the Impact Assessment on a possible revision of Directive 2011/64/EU
Electronic cigarettes are electrical devices that produce an inhalable aerosol from a special liquid. The liquids (e liquids) may consist of a solution of nicotine and flavourings in an appropriate solvent. Nicotine-free products are available as well. A large range of differently flavoured e liquids is offered to the consumer. The market of electronic cigarettes and corresponding e liquids experienced in recent years enormous growth. Some EU Member States reacted on this development and introduced excise duties on e liquids.
The partial introduction of excise duties in the common market and the lack of harmonisation of their magnitude might cause distortions of the market. For that reason, the Directorate-General Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) commissioned a study on the identification and characterisation of e liquids, which should be based on substances naturally occurring in tobacco.
The Administrative Arrangement (AA) with DG TAXUD foresaw the determination of the concentrations of nicotine and related tobacco alkaloids in e liquid samples, and to evaluate the agreement of the measured concentrations with concentrations indicated on the product label.
Additionally, the possibility of identifying e liquids containing tobacco derived flavours had to be studied with the aim to use this information for product classification.
More than 200 e liquid samples acquired in different countries were analysed for their tobacco alkaloid contents by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. A high proportion of the investigated products contained nicotine at a level significantly different from the indicated concentration. Mostly lower concentrations were found. However, significant amounts of nicotine were determined in some products declared as "zero-nicotine".
Volatile profiles of 108 e liquid samples were measured by gas chromatography hyphenated to high resolution quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) mass spectrometry. The tested samples were classified either as tobacco flavoured/non tobacco flavoured, or, according to their characteristic flavour, into a larger number of categories. Flavour profile based identification of tobacco products was possible for tested samples. Ninety substances were measured in each sample. The data matrix obtained from the analysis of about 80 samples was investigated with multivariate statistical methods for possibilities of discriminating tobacco and non tobacco flavoured e liquids. The developed models were cross validated and validated against about 30 independent samples. Both partial least square discrimination and decision tree analysis provided models that allow categorization of e liquids with high accuracy.
If a harmonized taxation of e-liquids were to be proposed, the following considerations should be taken into account in designing the tax base:
• The declared nicotine content often does not match with the measured nicotine content;
• Moreover, in products declared as ''zero-nicotine'' significant amounts of nicotine can be found;
• Chemical analysis allows distinguishing tobacco and non-tobacco e-liquids with high probability.
WENZL Thomas;
ZELINKOVA Zuzana;
REGUEIRO TATO Jorge;
GIRI Anupam;
2017-12-12
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC105828
978-92-79-77729-5,
1831-9424,
EUR 29062 EN,
OP KJ-NA-29062-EN-N,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC105828,
10.2760/663170,
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