We Stand With France: Don’t Ban Online Vape Sales

France is about to make a giant mistake. Article 23 of the 2026 Finance Bill proposes to ban online sales of vaping products to consumers, slap on new excise taxes, and push specialist vape retail under a tobacco-style authorisation regime. Translation: fewer choices for adults who’ve quit cigarettes, more power to the old nicotine status quo, and a wrecking ball through thousands of legitimate jobs. Vapotank+2#JESUISVAPOTEUR+2

At Riot, we’re not French — but we are fiercely pro-choice, pro-quitting, and pro-harm reduction. When a policy in one country threatens to shove ex-smokers back toward tobacco and turbo-charge the black market, the rest of us should pay attention. Because if it can happen there, it can happen here.

What Article 23 Really Does

Cut through the noise and it’s simple:

• Bans online (distance) sales to consumers: no more legally buying e-liquids or devices from legitimate French e-commerce sites if you’re a private individual. That’s a lifeline severed for rural communities, people with mobility issues, shift workers — anyone who relies on online ordering to stay smoke-free. Vapotank+1
• Adds a specific e-liquid excise (proposed at €0.03–€0.05 per ml by strength), raising prices for quitters and making vaping look pricier than smoking for many baskets. That’s backwards.  #JESUISVAPOTEUR
• Shifts the retail playing field toward tobacco-aligned channels via an authorisation regime that squeezes independent vape shops and information hubs. Fewer experts, less guidance, worse outcomes. ecigplanete.com+1

The Human Cost: Real Jobs on the Line

This isn’t abstract. Le Petit Vapoteur, France’s leading vape retailer, says 600 jobs inside their business are at risk from the online ban alone. Scale that across the ecosystem and you’re looking at thousands of livelihoods on the chopping block — pickers, customer-care teams, developers, logistics workers, content writers, compliance staff. These are skilled, tax-paying roles in the real economy. LinkedIn+1

And the blow doesn’t end at payroll. When you shut down legitimate online channels, you shrink VAT receipts, dent regional logistics and tech suppliers, and hand trade to illicit sellers who don’t check age, don’t pay tax, and don’t care what’s in the bottle. That’s not public health; that’s abdication.

The Public-Health Own Goal

Let’s be blunt: making safer alternatives harder to get and more expensive helps cigarettes. Banning online sales removes a critical access route for the people most likely to need it. Couple that with extra excise and you amplify the worst possible incentive — the old product looks cheaper and easier again. Harm reduction 101 says: meet people where they are, don’t rip away the rungs of the ladder. Vaping Post

When you wall off legal supply, demand doesn’t vanish. It goes underground. Illicit sellers don’t do age checks. They don’t do quality control. They don’t provide the product-switching guidance that specialist retailers — online and offline — give every day. You end up with less protection for youth, not more, and a more dangerous market for adults who are trying to stay off cigarettes.

“Vaper n’est pas fumer” — A Petition With Real Momentum

French consumers, shop owners, and doctors aren’t taking this lying down. The Change.org petition “Vaper n’est pas fumer. Lettre à nos élus” has surged to well over 186,000 signatures as of 6 November 2025 — a historic mobilisation that’s hard for any government to ignore. It’s a clear message: vaping is not smoking; don’t regulate it like it is, and don’t cut off the channels that help people stay smoke-free.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

This isn’t just a French story — it’s a playbook the UK should learn from. Grass-roots, data-driven, focused on keeping adult choice while protecting youth through enforcement and sensible standards, not blanket bans that backfire.

What the UK Can Learn (And Why We Care)

In the UK, we’ve always argued for smart regulation: licensing that actually bites, hard penalties for rogue sellers, real age-verification, and zero tolerance for youth marketing — without kneecapping adult access to reduced-harm products. The French petition proves something vital: the public gets it when you make the case clearly and humanely.

• Lead with people: “We are 600.” Put names and faces to the stakes. When voters see families behind the policy, they listen. LinkedIn
• Explain the harm-reduction logic in one line: make the safer thing harder to get and more expensive, people go back to the dangerous thing.
  
• Offer a practical action: a petition, a submission, a template email to MPs. The French campaign has converted concern into signatures at scale — 186k+ and climbing. Change.org

If Westminster ever flirts with an online-sales ban here, let’s be clear: we’ll fight it with the same energy — because shutting legal channels doesn’t protect kids; enforcing the law does. And it certainly doesn’t help ex-smokers.

A Better Path For France (And Everyone Else)

There’s a smarter route than Article 23:

1. Keep online sales — make them safer: mandatory, auditable age verification; mystery-shopper programmes; platform-level compliance; swift takedowns for breaches.
   
2. License retailers properly: real-world licences with meaningful fines and suspensions for violations, online and offline, so cowboys are out and adults are protected.
   
3. Target youth risk precisely: restrict youth-appealing packaging and marketing, fund enforcement, and drive public-health messaging built on facts, not fear.
   
4. Price signals that help quitting: don’t tax e-liquid into parity with cigarettes. Keep the safer option noticeably cheaper to support switching.
   

That’s how you protect young people and protect progress.

Our Message to French Lawmakers

Don’t ban online sales. Don’t push adults back to cigarettes. Don’t hand the market to the black economy. Don’t destroy productive jobs because it sounds tough. Listen to the experts, the retailers on the front line, and the hundreds of thousands of citizens who’ve signed to say vaper n’est pas fumer. Keep choice alive, keep harm reduction intact, and fix what’s broken — enforcement — instead of breaking what works. Change.org+1

Riot stands with French consumers, French vape workers, and responsible French retailers. Protect the progress. Kill the ban.

Sources (key points): Article 23’s online-sales prohibition and legal framing; proposed e-liquid excise; summaries and stakeholder analyses; Le Petit Vapoteur’s “600 jobs” statement; petition scale and FIVAPE mobilisation. FIVAPE+7Vapotank+7Vaping Post+7