What Is Happening With E-liquids?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves presented her 2024 Autumn budget to Parliament on the 30th of October 2024, and with it came a significant tax on vaping and smoking products.

These new taxes have been put in place to “maintain the financial incentive to switch from tobacco to vaping” as reported by the BBC , but what do they actually mean for vapers in the UK?

To better understand these new changes, let’s first take a look at the current regulations surrounding vaping.

The TPD (Tobacco Products Directive) is what governs the regulations surrounding tobacco and vaping products. Currently, vaping products must follow these requirements to be compliant:

• Capacity - Tanks, pods, and cartridges can hold no more than 2ml of e-liquid .

• Nicotine strength - E-liquids cannot contain more than 20mg of nicotine per ml.

• E-liquid bottles - E-liquid bottles containing nicotine cannot be sold in containers larger than 10ml.

• Child proof - Nicotine-containing products must be child-resistant and tamper evident.

• Banned ingredients - Certain ingredients such as caffeine, taurine and colourings are banned.

• Labelling - They must adhere to new labelling requirements.

• Warnings - Warnings telling customers that nicotine is a highly addictive substance must be present on the packaging, along with an information leaflet.

• MHRA notification - All e-cigarettes and e-liquids must be notified and published by the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) before being sold.

• Dose consistency - Devices must deliver a consistent dose of nicotine per puff.

These requirements have been put in place to make sure all vaping products sold in the UK are safe to use and so that imports are properly regulated. Some products however, like big puffs, fall into a grey area where these rules don’t technically apply .

You may have also heard about the ban on disposable vapes coming in 2025. Check out our blog discussing this change to find out more.

Now that you’ve got an understanding of the current regulations, it’s time to talk about these new changes.

So, what are they? In October 2026 the Vaping Products Duty will be introduced and a tax of £2.20 per 10ml of e-liquid will be enforced, along with the same rise per 100 cigarettes in tobacco duty. As mentioned above, this rise is to maintain the financial incentive to switch from cigarettes to vapes and to dissuade minors from picking up the habit altogether.

This means however, that since all nicotine-containing e-liquids must come in 10ml bottles due to TPD regulations, all 10ml bottles will go up in price from roughly £3 a bottle to about £5 per bottle (bear in mind that e-liquid prices will vary from store to store).

This won’t affect the prices of disposable vapes since they only hold 2ml of e-liquid and are being banned in june 2025 before the tax changes, but big puff vapes and their swappable pods will be hit due to their much larger tank capacities.

The nitty-gritty details are still unknown, and it’s unclear whether this new tax applies to just nicotine-containing e-liquids or e-liquids as a whole - including long fills and short fills - but we’ll update you as we learn more.

With the new tax set to come into place in October 2026 there’s still a while to go before prices are affected, but as you know, a lot can change in a couple of years. When it does come into effect, I expect there will be a significant shift in the way people go about vaping.

Big puffs, the newest vaping trend, will be hit, and since disposables are being banned from June 1st, 2025, I think we’ll see a lot more people transition over to refillable pod kits and the like. But as with most things in life that are uncertain, only time will tell what will happen.