Joseph Hart 23 February 2024

 

In late January this year, analysts at investment bank TD Cowans suggested that nicotine pouches are rapidly eating into the market share of combustible and electronic cigarettes. Their revenue rise of 12% and ZYN’s continued growth in the US market has piqued investor’s interest. However, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal shows that nicotine pouches are more than just a financial news story.

The WSJ on nicotine pouches

The Wall Street Journal piece does an excellent job of explaining the potential that nicotine pouches have to help smokers quit. They take a straightforward, research-based approach to the matter and quote the FDA in saying that nicotine does not cause cancer.

The piece also quotes Raymond Niaura, a professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health, who rightly mentions that pouches are comparable to risk with nicotine patches and gum. Additionally, the author states that in the past 30 days, only 1.6% of middle- and high-school students have tried a pouch.

It shows how low the bar is when speaking basic truth is something to celebrate. But it does seem like pockets of the media are starting to dig a bit deeper into nicotine pouches and go beyond the paranoid and frankly ludicrous statements of the tobacco control industrial complex.

The growth of ZYN

The article focuses on ZYN and its meteoric rise in recent years. Indeed, the brand has experienced staggering growth that long predates its acquisition by tobacco giant Philip Morris International. Per the article, sales have increased by around 80% in the last year, a testament to the pouch’s loyal follower base.

However, as the article notes, that fanbase has proved to be something of a problem for ZYN. All the memes, or Tucker Carlson’s claims that ZYN helps with erectile dysfunction, aren’t what PMI wants for their product. They don’t have a social media account, they’re not working with influencers, and they don’t make the supposedly “youth-oriented” flavours that people say are geared towards kids.

And yet… As we’ve previously written, last January, Senator Chuck Schumer launched a press conference demanding that federal regulators look into the product because, in his words,

“These nicotine pouches seem to lock their sights on young kids—teenagers, and even lower—and then use the social media to hook ‘em.”

Schumer calling it “the social media” suggests that he is not entirely in touch with the issue he wants to lecture others about. Indeed, there is something about products containing nicotine that causes some people to lose touch with reality. Schumer wants us to believe that nicotine pouch manufacturers are going after 12-year-old kids. This scandalous statement is not grounded in truth.

PMI is not paying influencers to promote its product. If anything, per the WSJ article, they’re asking influencers not to promote their product. In fact, evidence that the tobacco industry is targeting kids is so weak that the tobacco control industry has had to double-speak the meaning of youth into “people under 25” so that they could pretend there is a social media marketing epidemic.

Final thoughts

We’re all very used to the tobacco control pathological lying for attention (and grant money), but when politicians start doing it, it can ignite a debate. In our modern form of discourse, it seems like anything can and will be turned into grist for the culture war mill.

As amusing and insane as U.S. politics is, it’s not helpful for harm-reduction products to be politicised in such a divisive and polarising manner. Nicotine pouches aren’t about Trump, or “wokeism”, or the ethnicity of the lead in big-budget movies. They’re about public health, which affects everyone.

Thankfully, some sections of the media keep an open mind and judge a product on its merit, even its science. This Wall Street Journal piece is another reasonable take on nicotine pouches.