These days, you can find nicotine pouches behind the tobacco counter at just about every gas station, convenience store and supermarket. Nicotine pouches represent the fastest-growing segment of the nicotine industry, with sales across the world expected to grow at a compound rate of 34 percent each year from now through 2030.
If you have no personal experience with nicotine pouches, you’ve probably also noticed that they bear more than a passing similarity to another type of nicotine product that comes in a pouch: snus. Snus has been readily available in the United States since about 2008, when the Camel Snus brand exited test marketing and debuted nationally. Originally created in Sweden during the 1600s, snus has increased in popularity around the world in recent decades because it appears to prevent a lower cancer risk compared to other forms of smokeless tobacco.
Nicotine pouches and snus might look similar, but they’re almost entirely different from one another despite the fact that they both contain nicotine and both come in pouches. So, how do nicotine pouches and snus compare with one another, and which one is the best choice for you if you’re interested in alternative nicotine products? In this comparison, we’ll break them down.
What Are Nicotine Pouches?
A nicotine pouch is an oral nicotine product containing nicotine and flavors along with a vegetable-based filler that gives the pouch substance and helps it last longer. You use the pouch by placing it between your gum and the inside of your upper lip, and the nicotine absorbs into your system over a period of about a half hour. Whenever you’re no longer happy with the flavor, you’ll simply remove the pouch and throw it away. Snus doesn’t trigger the production of excess saliva and doesn’t require spitting.
What Is Snus?
Snus is used in the same way as a nicotine pouch, by placing the pouch inside your upper lip. The difference between snus and nicotine pouches, though, is that snus contains actual tobacco rather than isolated nicotine. It’s much the same as traditional chewing tobacco – which is also sometimes sold in pouches – but the difference is that snus is steam pasteurized rather than fermented like chewing tobacco. The pasteurization process inhibits the production of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, which seems to be the factor that gives snus a better safety profile compared to traditional dip. Like nicotine pouches, snus doesn’t require spitting. You can keep the pouch in your mouth as long as you’re happy with it and discard it whenever you like.
Nicotine Pouches are Cheaper and More Widely Available
Now that we’ve explained how snus and nicotine pouches are similar to one another, let’s talk about how they’re different. The first thing you need to know about snus is that many brands are difficult or impossible to find in the United States. Regulations prevent the release of any new tobacco product in the US without the maker demonstrating to the FDA’s satisfaction that the product is appropriate for the production of the public health. To date, Swedish Match is the only Swedish snus brand that has received approval.
The regulation of nicotine pouches, on the other hand, is something that’s still very much in the developmental stage. To date, the FDA hasn’t approved any nicotine pouch for sale, nor has the organization ordered the removal of any nicotine pouch from the market. As a result of the current regulatory limbo, retailers everywhere can easily find a wholesale nicotine pouch supplier and add the products to their inventories. You can find nicotine pouches at just about any store that carries tobacco or vaping products, and they typically cost much less than snus.
Snus Might Be Safer than Chewing Tobacco, but It’s Still Tobacco
The fact that the Swedish Match brand has received FDA approval to sell snus in the United States should be interesting to you if you’re a chewing tobacco user because it means the FDA is convinced that allowing the sale of snus will protect public health. Specifically, the FDA is allowing Swedish Match to claim that switching from cigarettes to snus will reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke, oral cancer and more. The claim of reduced risk mainly stems from the fact that the tobacco in snus is steam pasteurized rather than fermented.
Still, though, it’s important to understand that snus is definitely not a risk-free product. It still contains tobacco, and tobacco still causes cancer; the cancer rate just seems to be reduced compared to other tobacco products. Nicotine pouches, on the other hand, contain no tobacco at all. They do still contain nicotine – which carries risks of its own – but it’s likely that the risk profiles of nicotine pouches and snus are not the same.
You Can Use Nicotine Pouches and Snus Almost Anywhere
The biggest benefit that nicotine pouches and snus both have is the fact that you can use both of them virtually anywhere. Stuck in a long meeting at work? Taking a trip on a plane? Walking through a national park? You aren’t allowed to smoke or vape in any of those situations. It’s not appropriate to use traditional dip, either, if you’re in a setting in which spitting would be frowned upon. If you put the pouch in your upper lip, though, neither snus nor nicotine pouches will cause excess saliva production, so you’ll have no need to spit.
Nicotine Pouches Are Available in More Flavors
If you’re a tobacco connoisseur, you know there’s plenty of flavor variety from one brand to the next, whether the product in question is cigarettes, cigars or chewing tobacco. One thing all three of those products have in common, though, is that they can’t be flavored in a way that makes them taste like anything other than tobacco. That, however, isn’t true of nicotine pouches. As long as long as nicotine pouches exist in their current state of regulatory limbo – neither explicitly allowed nor banned – manufacturers will continue to push the boundaries in their attempts to gain market share. Snus can only taste like tobacco, but nicotine pouches are already available in hundreds of flavors. For that reason alone, many people find that nicotine pouches are infinitely more enjoyable than snus.
