Nanny State Criteria 2025

The Nanny State Index consists of three main categories: alcohol, nicotine and food/soft drinks. Each of the three categories is weighted equally at 33.3 per cent. Nicotine is subdivided into smoking and safer nicotine with an equal weighting or each, ie. 16.7 per cent.

Each category has a number of different criteria. Points are scored for each criteria which are combined to reach a final score of 100. The Nanny State Index is only concerned with policies that have an adverse impact on consumers. These policies are given different weights to reflect the extent to which consumers are negatively affected, from relatively minor inconveniences to heavy taxes and outright prohibitions. Countries with higher scores are less free and countries with lower scores are more free.

Paternalistic policies typically reduce the individual’s quality of life in one or more of the following ways:

1.

Raising prices (through taxation or retail monopolies)

2.

Stigmatising consumers

3.

Restricting choice

4.

Inconveniencing consumers (e.g., by restricting trading hours)

5.

Limiting information (e.g., with advertising bans)

6.

Reducing product quality

The Index includes any policy designed to deter consumption of legal products which imposes one or more of these costs on consumers. The criteria for each category and their weightings are shown on the pages for alcohol, safer nicotine, food and soft drinks, and tobacco. There are additional tables at the back of the Index.

All data reflect the legal status in February 2025 to the best of our knowledge. We do not make adjustments for how laws are enforced. Some countries may not police their regulations effectively - in fact, we know that they do not - but this is unquantifiable. We are interested only in what the law says, not whether it is easy to flout the law in practice. Nor do we include legislation that is pending. In some instances we have included commentary about laws that have been proposed or rejected. These are included to provide additional information and do not affect the scores.