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The inside of a smoke and tobacco shop in Center City, Philadelphia, was covered wall to wall with various products — traditional cigarettes, vaping pods and cartridges, chewing tobacco and more.
On the front counter, a shelf displayed small round canisters with brightly colored packaging for Zyn, a brand of nicotine pouches. These are a newer class of smokeless products that don’t contain tobacco.
Zyn was just authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a less harmful product compared to cigarettes and other smokeless tobacco. It’s the first and only nicotine pouch brand to get this approval to date.
Nicotine pouches are becoming more popular in the United States, data show. They are white, porous sacs about the size of chewing gum pellets and come in flavors like cool mint, citrus, cinnamon and coffee. They’re placed between a person’s lip and gum and slowly release a couple of milligrams of nicotine, the addictive substance found in most tobacco products.
Researchers in the Delaware Valley hope that the FDA’s decision to authorize some pouch brands will lead to stricter oversight of how these products are marketed and sold, and keep them out of the hands of minors.
“I think they have great potential for harm reduction among people who are using more dangerous products, but I think we all agree that young people should not be using any type of nicotine,” said Mary Hrywna, founding member of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies.
Right now, the use of nicotine pouches among teens remains low. Fewer than 2% of middle and high school students reported using the pouches in the past year, according to the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey.