Steve Forbes, the editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, is a free-market thinker and a powerful advocate for smoking harm reduction. While his opinions on nicotine pouches are unclear, he’s been a vocal critic of the FDA’s treatment of vapes and media and health professionals' willingness to spread rampant misinformation about these life-saving products.
Forbes' beliefs aren’t necessarily reflected in his magazine’s content. Typically, they take what might be described as a “balanced view” on these issues. A new Forbes article on nicotine pouches called How Zyn Conquered America is out. It’s time for Media Watch to take a look.
What does Forbes have to say about pouches?
The new Forbes article comes to us from their staff writer, Will Yackowicz. He typically covers vices for the magazine, and he’s written a lot of pieces I’ve enjoyed this year on topics like marijuana regulations, magic mushrooms, and a great piece on Bradley Cobb, the son of a notorious drug smuggler.
I was happy to see Yackowicz involved because he’s a proper journalist who gets out there and tries to understand an issue. In other words, he’s the opposite of the typical scaremongering activist types pumping out thinly researched trash on smoking-alternative products, with all the balance of a drunk at 3 AM.
Granted, he’s let down by the tagline, which states:
We can’t criticise Yakowicz for this because it’s clearly the work of an editor. But we can answer the question. Yes, nicotine pouches are good for a lot of people, including:
- Those who want to stop smoking.
- People who are interested in consuming nicotine in the healthiest way possible.
- Anyone directly or indirectly employed in the production and sale of the product.
While the editor takes a predictably dull-as-dishwater approach to the issue, Yackowicz delves deeper and interviews a range of characters, such as the owner of a tobacco outlet that sells pouches in Owensboro (where ZYN is manufactured) and Stacey Kennedy, the head of PMI’s U.S. operations.
The article also contains some interesting facts about ZYN's position in the Philip Morris International (PMI) product portfolio. For example, the author suggests that Forbes analysis predicts that ZYN accounted for $1.3 billion in PMI sales last year, which is a mere 3.7% of the multinational’s total sales.
We also get another interesting insight from Goldman Sachs analyst Bonnie Herzog, who mentions that ZYN is “six times more profitable than PMI’s cigarette division,” which adds to the social and reputational reasons why many Big Tobacco companies have gotten into the pouch game in recent years.
Big Tobacco’s big reformation
There are a few other angles covered in this sprawling yet engaging piece. As you might expect, we get some health warnings about nicotine being “ferociously addictive” when it is, in fact, a dependence. Similarly, there are also claims that the stimulant is a vasoconstrictor and raises blood pressure.
Contextualising these factors and pointing out that caffeine, alcohol, high-sodium foods, and many over-the-counter medicines do the same might have helped cut through the US public’s misconceptions about nicotine, but you can’t have everything.
Later, we get a bit about the FDA and a few quotes from a blood-sucking attorney, Scott Schlesinger, who has opportunistically filed a class action against PMI and Swedish Match. Then, there are a few lines about Tucker Carlson and Peter Thiel’s support for the product.
Finally, an interesting theme floats around the piece about how pouches are part of Big Tobacco’s attempt to reform. This fact is a central sticking point for many critics of smoking-alternative products, who seem aghast at the idea that a business might change with the times to better suit its audience. Food manufacturers do this all the time by offering products with reduced fat, salt, or calories. It shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest.
A Higher Standard of Journalism: Analyzing Nicotine Pouch Reporting
So many pieces about nicotine pouches are just reworded press releases or rehashed fear-mongering. Yackowicz’s Forbes article rises above that garbage, producing a well-researched, fair, thoughtful, and curious piece of journalism. This is the bar that gutless journalists at places like The Guardian and The Daily Mail fail to meet in their reporting on pouches and vaping.
