Average price of cigarettes including tobacco tax in Germany 1991-2023

On average, a cigarette in Germany cost around 35 cents. More than half of the price was made up of the tobacco tax, which increased significantly after 2000 and has continued to rise ever since. The raising of taxes may occur for various reasons, for example when the national government needs more funds to finance particular measures.

Expensive pastime

The German tobacco tax most recently brought in 14.2 billion euros worth of revenue. The list of tobacco products imported to Germany is a long one. The most represented products are cigarettes, though daily consumption levels among the German population have been dropping annually since the 1990s. If in 1991 the average total consumption per day equaled 401 cigarettes, in 2022 it had decreased by more than half. Other tobacco products in demand included stripped and otherwise not manufactured tobacco, as well as smoking tobacco and substitutes.

Rules and regulations

Regulations about smoking both in public and private locations vary by federal state in Germany, though most restaurants and venues across the country do not allow it. While cigarette consumption in the country is decreasing, a survey conducted in selected countries across the world showed that 40 percent of German respondents still smoked occasionally. Germany was in third place, behind Russia and Spain.