ZYN is Not Your Friend – The Lowdown on ZYN Nicotine Pouches
If you haven’t heard of zynning, zynfulencers or zynbabwe you are not alone, but there is an entire social media space dedicated to the ZYN nicotine pouches and it has managed to capture an impressionable audience. One Tiktoker has a video with more than 155,000 likes where he’s promoting the consumption of nine beers and nine ZYNs in the span of one baseball game. Another zynfluencer, a social media influencer that promotes ZYN, has over 73,000 followers whom he advises the best way to get their day started is to pop a nicotine pouch in their mouth. It’s the “breakfast of a real fien”, he writes. In another post he asks his followers how many pouches they go through in one day. Their answers vary from 4 to as much as 30.
What is ZYN?
ZYN is a smokeless tobacco product made of a manufactured powder of nicotine salts (
ZYN hit the U.S. market in 2014 and in recent years has generated enormous buzz becoming the leading oral nicotine brand. According to a 2022 report from JAMA, the total nicotine pouch sales in the U.S. rose from 126 million units in the last five months of 2019 to 808 million in the first three months of 2022.
Who is consuming ZYN?
While manufacturers claim their product is strictly marketed to adults, the truth of the matter is that nicotine pouches too often end up in the hands and mouths of middle and high school youth. An alarming trend is that nicotine pouches are so addicting, 73% of youth who have tried them cannot kick the habit. In April of 2023 the FDA issued more than 100 warning letters to brick-and-mortar and online retailers that sold ZYN to youth under the age of 21.
Tobacco-nicotine cessation advocacy has greatly contributed toward the decline in consumption. The Centers for Disease Control reported a 25 year low among U.S. middle and high school students, with a significant decline in e-cigarette use. As a result, Big Tobacco has been forced to pivot to a new form of nicotine addiction–nicotine pouches. And it does so under the insidious guise of harm reduction. While each nicotine pouch does contain less amounts of nicotine than one cigarette (one cigarette can contain 10 to 15 mg of nicotine), they are still harmful. Furthermore, reduction is not the goal. The eradication of nicotine is, because there is no safe dosage, especially in regard to children whose young minds are still developing.
What’s more, it is disingenuous for companies to push the narrative that pouches contain a smaller amount of nicotine knowing that most consumers of the product use multiple pouches in one day. People who are addicted to nicotine turn to products that are considered less harmful, oftentimes find themselves indulging in greater quantities of the “less harmful” product. In addition, recent data shows that of the U.S. adults currently using nicotine pouches, only about 35% were previous cigarette smokers, and of those, only 10% were able to stop smoking and switch to pouches completely.
Are nicotine pouches less harmful?
What does the evidence show? A study conducted by industry manufacturers found that a biomarker of oxidative cell damage, along with two biomarkers related to cardiovascular disease risk, showed no considerable difference between those found in smokers. Another 2022 study of 44 nicotine pouch products found that 26 of the samples contained cancer-causing chemicals, in addition to other chemicals such as: ammonia, chromium, formaldehyde, nickel, pH adjusters, and nicotine salt. While nicotine pouches have been approved by the FDA for sale in the U.S., this is by no means the barometer for which we determine a product’s safety. Nicotine is a highly addictive substance and has no positive impact, individually or societally. The only ones who benefit from these products are the manufacturers who have taken a position of placing profit over people. Phillip Morris International and its cohorts are not concerned with the devastation their products cause to men, women, children or the environment. The only thing motivating Big Tobacco is their bottom line.
We don’t need to wait another ten years to see the deadly effects of nicotine pouches when we’ve already witnessed all of the premature deaths and irreversible disease cigarettes have caused. As a society we can do better. We must do better.