It seems that ZYN pouches can’t stay out of the news, But this time, it’s not about the totally made-up, not-at-all-fitting-the-definition-of-epidemic epidemic.
Instead, ZYN is making headlines because the District of Columbia attorney general issued a subpoena demanding information about whether Swedish Match North America violated the 2022 Flavored Tobacco and Electronic Smoking Device Products Prohibition.
For anyone who needs a recap, that law came into effect in October 2022 and bans:
- The sales of flavoured tobacco or synthetic nicotine.
- The sales on ENDS within a quarter mile of schools.
The charge here is that Swedish Match North America (acquired by Philip Morris International in 2022) products were sold within D.C. A press release from PMI states:
“Our preliminary investigation indicates that there have been sales of flavored nicotine pouch products in D.C., predominantly related to certain online sales platforms and some independent retailers.”
In typical evil Big Tobacco style, PMI has… checks notes… complied with the subpoena, withdrawn online sales on Zyn.com, and promised a “full review of its sales and supply chain arrangements in D.C.”
It’s not fully clear what happened here. Although reading between the lines, it seems like a third-party vendor might have sold the nicotine pouches, possibly without PMI’s knowledge.
What confuses me is that large international businesses are careful about doing vendor due diligence checks to avoid bad PR and legal action. I find it hard to believe that PMI would sell directly in a small market like D.C. and, in the process, open itself up to:
- Costly litigation and fines
- A share price drop (it’s down 3%)
- Reputational damage.
This seems like a third-party risk management failure. If I were a PMI shareholder, I’d be pretty upset about this failure of due diligence.
But PMI’s problems don't end here. There are at least five other states with flavour bans on tobacco and nicotine products. ZYN has become so politicised in the US that PMI’s lack of third-party due diligence can and will be used as a cudgel to draw blood and, of course, cash.
The nicotine pouch “epidemic”
The National Youth Tobacco Survey released late last year lays bare the terrifying scale of the nicotine pouch epidemic.
Brace yourselves before I tell you that a full 1.5% of middle and high school students used a nicotine pouch over the last 30 days.
To put that into context, as Time Magazine showed last year, more teens are smoking cigars than using pouches.
Save Our Pouches Summer Tour
In slightly related news, the Americans for Consumer Protection has joined up with Building America’s Future and announced their Save Our Pouches Summer Tour.
The Conservative non-profits opened their campaign at the U.S. Open golf tournament in North Carolina last weekend, aiming to counter the Democrats' attempted crackdown on pouches.
The group plans on attending several major sporting events over the summer to raise awareness about the vital role that products like nicotine pouches can play in reducing the almost 500,000 smoking-related deaths in the US this year.
You can follow Save Our Pouches on Twitter/X or sign up for their petition at www.saveourpouches.com.
Hopefully, the unwelcome news about ZYN’s D.C. subpoena will bring the campaign some much-deserved attention.
Final thoughts
Political bickering, D.C. flavour bans, share price drops, and third-party due diligence are distractions from the critical issue of reducing preventable deaths from smoking.
Alternative nicotine products face a hostile regulatory environment in the US and the rest of the world. Ensuring people have access to products that help them quit smoking or never start in the first place is essential.
