Italy Adds 20 Cents to Cigars, Rolling Tobacco and Heated Sticks

Italy has lifted the retail price of a set of tobacco and noncombustible products by 20 cents, with the change taking effect on October 14 under updated price lists issued by the country's Customs and Monopolies Agency.

The increase reaches specific categories rather than the whole range. It covers manufactured cigars, rolling or cut tobacco, the sticks used in heated-tobacco devices, and noncombustible inhalation products, and it does not include standard cigarettes in this particular move. The agencies behind the lists have updated the affected products accordingly, so the 20-cent change is applied to a defined set of items rather than across the board.

The step fits into a wider plan to raise tobacco excise taxes in stages. Italy has been working through a schedule of increases that run through 2028, and this is one of the scheduled moves, aimed at raising revenue while pushing the price of the affected categories up. That a noncombustible inhalation product is in the same 20-cent step as traditional cigars and cut tobacco shows how the new categories have been folded into the same excise framework as the older ones.

For the heated and inhalation products, the change means that the retail price of the sticks and of the inhalation devices rises by the same amount as the cigars and the rolling tobacco, a sign that regulators are treating the new products as price-equivalent to the traditional ones they are meant to replace. The 20-cent figure is a staged increase, not a one-off, and the next steps in the plan through 2028 are where the larger price movement is expected to come.