Media Watch: Pouches Catch Strays in Strange US Talking Heads Battle

To outsiders, the battlefield of American politics is beyond strange. To insiders, it’s probably even odder, despite some level of desensitisation. These days, any domain of human interest or experience can instantly become fuel for the political fire, reduced to a mere stick to beat others with. Today, it’s nicotine pouches’ turn, once again.

For more than a decade, the discourse around Donald Trump has been frankly nuts. Previously sane people have been driven insane, either criticising or condemning the controversial current US president, controlling themselves into mangled shapes whose primary moral compass seems to be driven by either agreeing or disagreeing with his actions.

It has resulted in some of the most biased and boring rhetoric ever seen by man, and takes that are so deranged that the internet has frequently become an unbearable place to be.

However, it’s not just the Republicans or Democrats who are engaged in an internal war. In recent times, even the pro-Trump media are at each other’s throats. Nowhere is that more evident than in the bombastic exchanges between Laura Loomer and Tucker Carlson, and recent exchanges over the latter’s Alp nicotine pouches.

The Loomer-Carlson battle

You can trace the roots of this particular conflict back to 2025, when Loomer criticised Carlson for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 due to business ties. This MAGA-Civil War conflict deepened over their relative positions on Israel and conflict in the Middle East more broadly, with Loomer’s hawkish, pro-Israel stance rubbing up against Carlson’s newfound love of Qatar and his interventionist positions.

The above is simplified for brevity and focus. What we’re interested in is how pouches have gotten dragged into the mix.

What’s ALP got to do with it?

In late 2024, Tucker Carlson launched ALP. For a while, he’d been a huge supporter and user of ZYN. However—and yes, it’s that stupid—he turned on the brand and Philip Morris International for being “too woke”, and insisted to his supporters that they needed a more masculine brand.

By then, pouches were already a “culture war” product, with countless articles attempting to tie the product to sexism, conservatism, white supremacy, or whatever taboo would fit, rather than it just being the safest way to consume nicotine.

A new twist

Recently, Loomers’ problems with Carlson have spilled over into a mini-campaign against ALP, and by association, nicotine pouches as a whole. In late February, she released an “explosive” tweet, quoting:

• A July 24, 2024, FDA Warning Letter to Aerosol and Liquid Packaging, Inc., describing significant Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) violations at that contract drug manufacturer.
• A December 19, 2025, FDA Warning Letter to Unipack LLC, also detailing major CGMP and data‑integrity violations at that drug manufacturing facility.

The merits of these letters are open to debate. Taken at face value, they could be a problem for any firm relying on those plants for drug‑type manufacturing, such as ALP. However, there is a good chance they stop short of declaring the ALP unsafe because the specific contractors in question may have already remedied these issues or may only be involved in secondary operations, such as packaging.

Loomer has not stopped there. By March 2nd, she had a new angle of attack. Now, she is focusing on Carlson’s use of excessive doses of nicotine. Additionally, she is promoting a paper from 2024 that focused on a single individual misusing nicotine pouches to cram for an exam, which led to him being hospitalised with nicotine poisoning. The individual in question recovered quickly and was discharged from the hospital.

Final thoughts

What should we take away from this mini-drama? The FDA complaints will be investigated and, if foul play is proven, it should affect ALP. However, the insinuation and scaremongering about the harm of nicotine must be seen in context. The individual in question was nicotine naive and used pouches in a way that was explicitly outside the manufacturer’s instructions.

On balance, I’m with Loomer when she says that Carlson’s promotion of extreme use is reckless. He should know better than to encourage high doses that go way beyond common sense. However, I’m not sure if Loomer really cares about this beyond it being a way to criticise Carlson, which sadly undercuts her point.