Swedish Health Agency Presents Tobacco Security Labels

While we are used to seeing informative and dynamic presentations of banknote designs and security features on central bank websites, imagine our surprise when we came across a presentation of tobacco authentication labels on the Swedish Public Health Agency site ¹!

As our readers know from previous articles published in Tax Stamp & Traceability News™ (TSTN), all EU member states must apply authentication features on each unit pack of cigarettes and other tobacco products. At least one of the features must be overt, one semi-covert, and one covert.

Member states that run tax stamp programmes use their stamps to fulfil this obligation. However, five states (Sweden, Austria, Cyprus, France, and Finland), plus the UK, don’t employ tax stamps. In these countries, the obligation to apply authentication features is delegated to the tobacco industry through the use of security labels, which are procured directly by the industry from various suppliers.

These labels cannot be considered as a substitute for tax stamps, for the reasons explained by Nicola Sudan in TSTN March 2021, since they have no link to any excise tax collection function. This is consistent with the fact that the presentation of these labels was provided by the Swedish Public Health Agency, as opposed to the Swedish Tax Agency.