Nicotine pouches prove a hit but come under increasing scrutiny

Dangling from a parachute hundreds of metres above the ground, a young man in a US Army uniform slips a small pouch from a round plastic box into his mouth: “Nothing like a chino mid-air out here at Fort Bragg,” he says with a grin.

The video clip, which has been liked more than 53,000 times on Instagram, is one of thousands posted online in the past year praising nicotine pouches — flavoured sachets, similar to a small piece of chewing gum, that are placed between the lip and gum where their contents can be absorbed.

Similar to Swedish snus and nicknamed “lip pillows” and “chinos”, among others, they were traditionally marketed as a means to stop smoking.

They have more recently attracted investment from the world’s biggest tobacco companies, eager to shift towards so-called reduced-risk products as regulation and health concerns tighten worldwide — and have become a viral hit with consumers, many of whom are too young to already be heavy smokers.

Sales by volume of the most popular brand, Zyn, surged more than 40 per cent year on year in the US in the third quarter and almost 70 per cent in the rest of the world, the company said on an earnings call.

Philip Morris International (PMI), which acquired Zyn maker Swedish Match in 2022 for about $16bn said the product had helped boost its revenues by almost a fifth in the first nine months of this year as it delivered third-quarter results last month. It added that Zyn was now available in 30 countries, with recent launches in Greece and the Czech Republic.

The product is especially popular among college-aged, male fans, dubbing themselves “Zynfluencers”, who claim the product helps them be more productive, reduce stress or just get a buzz.

Celebrity fans of Zyn include Joe Rogan and rightwing former Fox presenter Tucker Carlson, who called Zyn “a powerful work enhancer . . . and also a male enhancer, if you know what I mean”, on a podcast last year.

British American Tobacco (BAT), which owns the Velo brand, said in August that nicotine pouches were its fastest-growing new category with organic revenue up more than 48 per cent in the first half of 2024 compared with 2023.

US group Altria reported that about 11 per cent of its 2023 net revenue of $24.5bn, was from oral products such as snus or nicotine pouches.

Investment is pouring in. PMI is spending $600mn on a factory in Colorado to avoid the shortages that held back its sales growth in the first half of 2024. Meanwhile, Imperial Brands last year announced it was spending at least £65mn on acquiring a range of pouches.

“An absolute fortune has already been invested,” said Rae Maile, an analyst at Panmure Gordon. “Some brands will pick up well, but the problem [for major companies] is it is not a difficult product to produce.”

The global market for nicotine pouches is predicted to grow from $7.4bn in 2023 to $25.2bn by 2028, according to data provider Euromonitor. Beyond the US and UK, the pouches are popular in Nordic countries, while sales in Pakistan, eastern Europe and some parts of Asia are predicted to grow, according to reports by the companies themselves.

But this growth means tobacco control advocates and regulators have also started to take notice. As with vapes, there are concerns that the pouches — which come in flavours such as peach, mango and bellini — will appeal to younger people and non-smokers and create a new generation of nicotine addicts.

Researchers at the University of Stirling found some pouches for sale on the UK high street have a nicotine content equivalent to 10 cigarettes.

“They are strong enough to be psychoactive and they can cause local irritation,” said Rosemary Hiscock of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath. “Even if flavours are safe for food, we can’t be sure that they’re actually going to be safe if they’re held in the mouth for a long time, next to the gum line. There’s not been research on the interactions of that at all.”

Several countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands, have already banned nicotine pouches. The European Commission’s health and food safety commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in 2023 their popularity “raises serious public health concerns”.

Snus, which unlike nicotine pouches contains tobacco leaf instead of synthetic nicotine, has been prohibited in the UK and EU since 1992.

The US Food and Drug Administration said that although just 1.8 per cent of teenagers it surveyed had tried pouches it was “closely monitoring” youth use of the format. It has formally authorised the sale of just one brand of pouches, and a similar decision on whether Zyn can be marketed has been pending since 2020 — while this is undecided it is still legal to market and sell.

In the UK, however, nicotine pouches are regulated like ordinary food and drink. They can be sold to under-18s and have fewer restrictions on marketing and packaging than tobacco products.

Brands such as JTI’s Nordic Spirit pouches have been promoted at music festivals, while Zyn and Velo run rewards programmes that allow consumers to swap empty packets for prizes such as iPads.

Independent brands have proliferated, some of which appear to target young people with packaging featuring confectionery brands or cartoon characters. One, Kurwa, sells flavours such as gummy bear or pear cake in “mafia” or “killer” themed tins.

UK charity Action on Smoking and Health is among those urging the UK government to bring in laws such as establishing 18 years as a minimum legal age of sale, said chief executive Hazel Cheeseman.

The industry has pushed back that it uses aggressive marketing tactics or behaves irresponsibly.

PMI told the Financial Times it followed local laws as well as applying a strict marketing code that rules out working with online influencers. It said its Zyn rewards programme was aimed at “strictly age-verified, legal-age nicotine consumers”.

BAT said it supported “specific regulation” for nicotine pouches, including age restrictions. It has championed a voluntary industry code of conduct in the UK to limit pouches’ nicotine content and avoid youth-orientated packaging and marketing that claims a mood-altering affect.

Kurwa did not respond to a request for comment.

“They are convenient compared to smoking or vaping, don’t smell and then there’s the health benefits,” said Felix Stefansson, co-founder of independent brand Helwit, which targets older ex-smokers, arguing that research points to the pouches being significantly less harmful than cigarettes.

The UK’s Food Standards Agency has said “it is plausible that use of oral nicotine pouches . . . would be associated with a reduction in overall risk of adverse health effects” when discussing it in the context as a replacement for smoking.

Regulation might not prove the greatest risk for the industry said Maile, who suggested nicotine pouches might ultimately have limited appeal to consumers. “There is so much more to tobacco than a nicotine hit,” he said. “There’s the social aspect and the whole theatre of smoking. You can’t blow a smoke ring with a pouch.”