All about the Zyn-sation of nicotine pouches

Zyn pouches are the latest nicotine craze in the world of cigarette substitutes. They’re touted as a panacea for addiction to smoking and vaping. Philip Morris boasts selling more than 130 million containers in the first quarter of this year. But health experts and government officials are looking to crackdown on the sale of these pouches.

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There’s a new nicotine craze that has some parents and health officials concerned. It’s called Zyn. That’s the name of a popular brand of flavored nicotine pouches. They are completely tobacco free, and fans can’t get enough. But critics point to potential risks of the popular product. NPR’s Lola Murti reports.

LOLA MURTI, BYLINE: A few things to know about Zyn. First, it’s spelled Z-Y-N. It’s from a former Swedish company that Philip Morris bought two years ago, and its plastic packaging is replete with bright, fresh labels.

(SOUNDBITE OF CONTAINER LID FLIPPING OPEN)

MURTI: Flip open the puck-shaped container. It resembles Ice Breakers mints – inside, 15 little pouches that give an intense burst of nicotine when you pack a lip.

JOSH HADDEN: It lasts, like, 15 minutes – the initial head rush.

MURTI: That’s Josh Hadden, a senior at Texas A&M. He tells me he started using Zyn a couple years ago. It was a way to quit vaping, and he likes it.

HADDEN: You still feel, like, a little buzz that you can never get from vaping.

MURTI: The nicotine releases immediately into the bloodstream. And better yet, says Hadden, the pouch is discrete – no smoke, no spitting, no stigma.

HADDEN: Zyn is – like, you can do it during class, and you can do it walking around. And it’s so great.

MURTI: And college students are flocking to the pouches. Part of the attraction – buzz from Zynfluencers (ph) like Tucker Carlson, AKA Tucker Carlzyn (ph), who saturates social media and podcasts with messages of just how cool this product is. And then there are the flavors – 10 in all, from citrus to cinnamon.

HADDEN: I like the peppermint ones, and I like the coffee ones. And if you put them together, you get, like, a little peppermint coffee drink, which is always fun.

MURTI: Fun? Maybe. But it turns out it’s a cheaper habit than vaping. Nicotine pouches have been around for a decade, introduced as an alternative to tobacco. Today, Zyn dominates the market. Back in the spring, there were reported shortages of the product. And by summer, it was worse, all a result of Philip Morris voluntarily stopping online Zyn sales in the U.S. Questions had been raised about minors getting the flavored pouches.

HADDEN: Now I can find it again. It’s just more expensive. But I don’t really care.

MURTI: And to meet the rising demand, Philip Morris is building a new factory. The company says sales are up. In just the first three months of the year, it sold 132 million cans of Zyn. That’s up 80% from last year. But Zyn still has a bumpy road ahead. Congress and the FDA have shared big concerns about its addictiveness and its appeal to minors. Twenty-one-year-old Josh Hadden, who started using to quit vaping, admits he’s one of the many users who can’t seem to quit Zyn.

Do you feel addicted to Zyn now?

HADDEN: Yes, 100%. I have a Zyn in right now.

MURTI: While addiction is a very real concern, Dr. Tory Spindle, a behavioral psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, says it’s a better alternative to smoking and vaping.

TORY SPINDLE: I don’t think I would support an outright ban on them, but I do think that we need to be more careful with how they’re marketed.

MURTI: Philip Morris applied for the right to market Zyn back in 2020. That application – it’s still pending with the FDA. So for now, Zyn continues to be sold in the U.S.

Lola Murti, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF KENDRICK LAMAR SONG, “B****, DON’T KILL MY VIBE”)

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