Policy context
Recent years have seen the rapid and well-documented rise in popularity of ecigarettes.
In response to this in 2014 the European Parliament passed a revised
Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU (TPD) which contains a wealth of quality,
safety and efficacy requirements for nicotine-containing e-cigarettes1 which are not
licensed as medicines. It also imposes extensive restrictions on where they can be
advertised. However this legislation was subject to a two-year hiatus before it
became effective in member states; this happened in May 2016.
Later in 2014, CAP and BCAP put in place interim content rules for all e-cigarette
advertisements in new sections in their Codes. They committed to look at the issue
again once the TPD became law.