The Elf Bar poses an increasingly widespread threat, which is why the government is now also taking legal action against the illegal product, setting the amount of fines that can be imposed on illegal traders extremely high, State Secretary Bence Rétvári announced on his Facebook page.
As stated: The Elf Bar is a disposable electronic cigarette pre-filled with liquid, equipped with a battery. It is particularly dangerous that products with an unknown, untested and unreliable composition, with a very high nicotine content, are specially made for young people.
In a single Elf Bar, the amount of nicotine equivalent to 3 or even 16 packs of cigarettes has been concentrated. So one stick can contain the harmful effects of up to three hundred cigarettes . And the user cannot control the amount of nicotine he inhales at one time. This is why it is particularly dangerous, since nicotine inhaled in large quantities can cause chest pain, dizziness, vomiting or even spitting up blood. Not to mention its long-term negative effects, nicotine addiction develops at a young age, which can be medically proven to be one of the biggest causes of lung cancer, as well as circulatory and other diseases.
Elf Bar is spreading at hyper speed on social media, with nearly 700 million search and viewing numbers on the social portals most popular with young people.
As soon as the illegal product appeared, the government began to act to protect the health of young people. The Hungarian government is committed to curbing youth smoking, which is why it has been forbidden to sell flavored tobacco products in any form in our country for more than 2 years, since 2020.
This is why it may happen that, although the Elf Bar was released on the market later, even at the time of its release, according to domestic legislation, not only its distribution, but also its possession is considered illegal. Given that we are facing a serious global problem, it was necessary to pass new legislation.
That is why the Parliament adopted stricter legal provisions on July 19, thanks to which the retail trade of unauthorized tobacco products can be hit with deterrent fines.
According to the new legislation, those who market such unauthorized tobacco products, such as Elf Bar, can be fined HUF 1-50 million in the case of a natural person, and HUF 5-500 million in the case of a business company. The National Tax and Customs Administration and the Supervisory Authority for Regulated Activities have already strictly investigated the illegal trade of these products. Thanks to this, tens of thousands of products with a total value of hundreds of millions of forints were seized nationally in the past period, the state secretary pointed out.
