See more of Dutch Brief in your Google search results
The Netherlands has set itself the goal of a “smoke-free generation” by 2040, a future in which no young person smokes or vapes and no more than 5 percent of adults do. New research suggests that goal is drifting further out of reach, and doctors are increasingly alarmed, above all by vaping and its pull on ever-younger children.
What the survey found
According to a survey of 2,000 people carried out for the comparison website Independer, and reported by Het Parool, 40 percent of young adults aged 18 to 29 currently smoke or vape, making them the heaviest users of any age group.
Use does decline with age, as more people quit, but only gradually: around 30 percent of those over 30 still smoke or vape, falling to 17 percent of over-45s and about 10 percent of over-60s. The pattern reflects a familiar problem in tobacco control, that those who start young often carry on for life.
A number worth putting in context
The 40 percent figure is striking, but it comes from a single survey commissioned by a commercial company, based on 2,000 respondents, rather than from official national statistics. Those official figures, gathered by the Trimbos Institute, the national expert centre on tobacco, alcohol and drugs, together with the CBS statistics office and the RIVM public health institute, tend to be lower and are measured in a more standardised way. They too, however, show smoking and vaping remaining stubbornly common among the young, and the long decline in smoking slowing down. The precise percentage should be treated with some caution, but the direction it points in matches the wider evidence.
Doctors sound the alarm over vaping
For the doctors watching this most closely, the sharpest concern is vaping. Noor Rikkers, a paediatric lung specialist with the campaign group Doctors Sound the Alarm (Artsen Slaan Alarm), called the figures shocking, and warned that behind this group of young adults is an even younger one already vaping. “Once you start vaping, you have a three times greater chance of starting to smoke,” she said, adding that the great majority of young people who vape also smoke cigarettes.
Her deeper worry is who is being drawn in. Vaping, she said, is increasingly targeting young children “with vulnerable young brains”, who “sometimes vape day and night”. She reserved particular disgust for so-called smart vapes with built-in games, where the prompt is “take a puff to get to the next level”. As she put it: “It’s simply a business model. Children are more susceptible to addiction because they follow their impulses, but the brakes don’t work yet. So if you have the children, you have customers for life.”
Paediatric lung specialists, she said, see the consequences in the ward: children admitted with a collapsed lung, as well as loss of concentration, depression, sore throats, abdominal pain, and withdrawal symptoms that are not always quickly recognised because of the child’s age. Part of what makes modern vapes so addictive is their design: many contain nicotine salt, a form of nicotine that is smooth on the throat and reaches the brain very quickly, and many young users do not know how much nicotine their device holds or how hooked they are becoming. Rikkers argues for a rigorous solution, a ban on all products containing nicotine, for everyone, on the grounds that nicotine is the common thread running through all of them.
SPONSORED
You’re overpaying your accountant. And they still don’t call you back.
Neno gives you a dedicated bookkeeper, automated admin, real-time financial insights and a free business bank account. Everything your business needs, in one place.
No chasing. No surprises. No unnecessary costs.
The real concern: vaping is not replacing smoking
The more important story, health experts say, lies in how young people use these products. There has been a common assumption that vaping is a lesser evil, that it is better for a young person to experiment with an e-cigarette than with a tobacco cigarette. The research suggests that assumption is mistaken.
The Trimbos Institute has found that vaping and smoking among young people go hand in hand rather than one replacing the other. In its figures, a large majority of young people who vape regularly also smoke tobacco, and a substantial share of young smokers also vape. Rather than acting as a substitute, vaping appears to be functioning as an additional source of nicotine addiction, exposing young users to the harmful substances in both cigarette smoke and vape vapour.
Part of the appeal, and the risk, lies in the products themselves. Many young people say they started vaping because of the sweet flavours, with names like cotton candy or icy mango, and modern vapes often contain nicotine salt, a form of nicotine that is smooth on the throat and reaches the brain very quickly, which can make it especially addictive. Researchers have found that many young vapers do not know how much nicotine their device contains and underestimate how addictive it is. Despite a ban on flavoured vapes, such products remain easy to obtain through illegal sellers, who reach young people readily through social media.
Why it matters for the 2040 goal
The findings matter because of the ambition they measure against. The target of a smoke-free generation is set out in the National Prevention Agreement, and the surge in vaping among the young is precisely the kind of trend that could push it out of reach, because it brings a new generation into contact with nicotine at an early age, through a product many wrongly believe to be harmless.
The government has been taking steps in response. A flavour ban for vapes is already in place, and an action plan against vaping includes extra money, structurally from 2026, for the food and product safety authority (NVWA) to step up enforcement against illegal sellers, higher fines for breaches of tobacco law, and campaigns aimed at young people. Whether such measures can turn the tide, against easy availability on the black market and the powerful pull of nicotine, will determine how realistic the 2040 goal proves to be.
For anyone who wants to stop smoking or vaping, free help and advice is available, including through a doctor or pharmacist and the national quitline, and support is known to improve the chances of quitting successfully.