Tobacco in retail: why licensing of cigarette sales was postponed to autumn

Licensing of wholesale and retail sales of cigarettes, vapes and sticks, which was planned to be introduced on March 1 this year, will be postponed until the autumn. However, both sellers of tobacco products and manufacturers themselves believe that it is necessary to start preparing for a new procedure for the market right now. Moreover, it is necessary to do this not only for businesses, but also for regional authorities that will issue licenses. After all, we are talking about more than a quarter of a million retail outlets, and any failure to implement the new requirements of the law can lead to an increase in the illegal market. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

Deferred amendments

We are talking about amendments to the law on tobacco market regulation, which the State Duma adopted in the first reading last fall. The essence of the changes is to extend licensing to the retail and wholesale sale of cigarettes, sticks and

Recall that the production of tobacco products, as well as export-import operations, have been licensed since 2024.

The issuance of retail and wholesale licenses was supposed to start on March 1, 2026, and starting in the fall, it would be impossible to trade without a permit. But, as Kommersant wrote earlier, citing market sources, the launch is delayed by at least six months. And a ban on working without licenses and responsibility for this may be introduced only in March 2027.

The Ministry of Finance explained the postponement by the need to finalize the bill taking into account the proposals of the industry. The office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko added that the regulations were worked out in detail with the business in order to avoid difficulties.

Why does everyone need time?

State Duma deputy Artyom Kiryanov notes that the postponement is due to the fact that interdepartmental coordination of amendments to the second reading is underway, and in large cities, capacities are not yet fully ready for licensing "thousands of enterprises."

JTI Russia explained that the wholesale link is the least of its concerns. There are few players there, and Rosalokoltabakcontrol will handle their licensing. The service already has relevant experience in issuing permits to manufacturers and importers. But the situation with retail is different. According to Sergey Glushkov, Director of Corporate Relations and Communications at JTI Russia, issuing tobacco licenses is a new business for regional authorities, and the total number of outlets in the country exceeds 250 thousand.

Indeed, if several hundred companies are engaged in the production and import of tobacco, and about two thousand wholesalers, then according to expert estimates, there are an order of magnitude more retail outlets where you can buy cigarettes or vapes. These are convenience stores, rental outlets in shopping malls, and free-standing pavilions.

"It is already necessary to think about preparations for the introduction of tobacco retail licensing and the allocation of the necessary additional resources,— Glushkov notes. — Moreover, it is necessary to think about this not only for the authorities, but also for businesses, primarily small ones. Small outlets specializing in the sale of tobacco and nicotine-containing products do not have the necessary experience, unlike chain grocery stores that already have experience working with alcohol licenses.

Vladlen Maksimov, President of the Small Format Trade Association, shares a similar opinion.

The networks that already sell alcohol know how to work with documents.: they have lawyers and well-established processes. But the owners of small pavilions, for whom tobacco is often a commodity that generates the main income, may face difficulties. They will have to sort out the documents and pay the state duty — for retail it will amount to 20 thousand rubles per year for one point.

—The marginality of cigarette sales for small outlets is 6-7%, no more," he explains. — You need to live on these percentages, pay rent, wages, taxes. There is minimal room for maneuver here. Any additional costs can make the business simply unprofitable. New entrepreneurs don't enter this segment, it's mostly the same people who have been involved in this business for many years," says Maximov.

According to the new rules, a license must be obtained for each retail facility separately. To check whether a point of sale meets the requirements (for example, whether it has a room with an area of at least five square meters), inspectors will have to physically travel to the site. In other words, regional authorities need to allocate additional resources, including human resources, to process all license applications so that the bottleneck effect does not occur

The problem of counterfeiting

The authorities have been putting the tobacco market in order for several years. Ten years ago, the problem of illegal products in this area did not exist. But due to a sharp increase in the rates of the main tax on cigarettes, the excise tax, average cigarette prices began to rise rapidly. Often, the increase in excise tax rates (and, consequently, prices) was carried out ahead of inflation and the purchasing power of the population.

If in 2015 the share of illegal products was about one percent of the total cigarette market, then ten years later this figure increased many times and in some periods exceeded 15% — cheap cigarettes produced in the EAEU countries, primarily Belarus and Armenia, began to enter the Russian market.

Excise tax rates are lower there compared to the Russian Federation. This creates a price gap - the average price of a pack of cigarettes in Belarus is 30-50% cheaper than in Russia.

At the cost of serious efforts (the introduction of labeling, tougher responsibility for illegal trafficking, the use of navigation seals, etc.) on the part of the state, the volume of illegal cigarette trade began to decline and reached 9.1% in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2025 (NSCC data). Significant sales volumes are being returned to the legal market, and additional tens of billions of rubles in taxes are being paid to the budget. By the end of 2025, excise revenues to the federal budget from tobacco and nicotine-containing products exceeded 1 trillion rubles for the first time. However, it is obvious that the complete whitewashing of the market is still very far away. Criminal reports confirm this: recently in Bryansk, a local resident was brought to court, who bought a large batch of counterfeit cigarettes for sale, and about 25 thousand packs worth more than 4.8 million rubles were seized from him. The damage to the copyright holders was estimated at 2.1 million.

Therefore, law-abiding sellers and tobacco producers themselves support the introduction of licensing.

The alcohol market is used as an example. After stricter licensing rules and the introduction of the Unified State Automated Information System (USAIS), the share of illegal alcohol trafficking has sharply decreased. Tobacco is following the same path: the Honest Mark labeling system is already in operation, and a single minimum price per pack has been introduced (153 rubles this year).

According to Kiryanov, licensing of tobacco wholesale and retail will become the "last link" in the tobacco market control system, starting from the moment of crossing the border and ending with a purchase at a point of sale.

And now the main task of both the state and business is to ensure that the innovation does not affect law-abiding entrepreneurs.

— The developers of the law, in particular the Ministry of Finance, have repeatedly stressed that the task of licensing is not to reduce the number of outlets, but to restore order, understand how many there are and what they are, — says Maximov. — But some regions can use this story to deal with unstable objects. They do not understand a simple thing: if a person cannot buy cigarettes where he is used to, he will buy them anyway — just in another place, possibly illegal. And in excisable goods, illegal trafficking is especially attractive: more than 70% of the value of a pack is excise taxes and taxes that go into the shadows.