Fruity Flavors, Festivals, and F1—WHO Report Reveals How Nicotine Pouches Hook Consumers

Although the tobacco-free sachets may be a less harmful alternative to other nicotine products, they are still highly addictive and are often promoted using the lifestyle and identity strategies of conventional tobacco companies. As this messaging is used to tout a wide variety of flavored products across social media and live events, the WHO is worried that these tactics may attract new users, particularly youth.

According to the WHO, nicotine pouch companies, many of which are owned by major tobacco corporations, have been using that industry’s playbook.

“They start with the concept of being modern, discrete, tobacco-free, and making it more acceptable,” said Vinayak Prasad, MBBS, MBA, unit head of the Tobacco Free Initiative for WHO. “This is what happened in the cigarette markets in the ’70s and ’80s,” when “light,” “mild,” and “low-tar” versions were widely promoted.

Unlike the “light” cigarettes of that era, which still involve inhalation of toxic chemicals, nicotine pouches are smokeless, leading some experts to consider them a true lower-risk alternative. But even without the health risks posed by tobacco combustion, nicotine addiction is a problem in its own right, cautioned Nancy Rigotti, MD, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She said that any attraction of new nicotine users poses public health harms.

The WHO report details how messaging tries to associate nicotine pouches with certain lifestyles and identities, reflecting how consumers may wish to be perceived. Just like the Marlboro man was meant to link cigarettes to a sense of rugged individualism, nicotine pouch ads promote a similar self-identity, branded with slogans such as Zyn’s “Zyndividual” and Velo’s “Be Authentic.” Companies have built on their messages by sponsoring concerts, festivals, and sporting events. Nicotine pouch ads have replaced cigarettes on Formula 1 carsand race suits at a time when the sporting organization is actively courting a younger audience.

“When you see Zyn and Velo on the racing cars, what does it show and who are they targeting?” asked Prasad.

In addition to these more traditional strategies, nicotine pouch companies have pushed advertising into the modern era with their use of social media. Partnerships with influencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok reach millions of audience members, and the WHO warns that children and adolescents are particularly susceptible to their sway. Influencers may be viewed as more “authentic” than other forms of advertising and may skirt certain marketing regulations. Some nicotine pouch companies also promote splashy rewards programs, where purchases translate to rewards points that can be exchanged for expensive gifts. Zyn’s offerings include a hairdryer and a virtual reality headset, for example.

Mitchell Zeller, JD, who served as the director of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products from 2013 to 2022, said that the tactics “should give even proharm reduction people pause when they see what the companies have engaged in around the world.” He said that even if this visibility is reaching health-concerned people who smoke “who might otherwise not find out about an alternative product,” this is coming at the price of “kids’ eyeballs on those same marketing tactics.”

Globally, retail sales of nicotine pouch products exceeded 23 billion units in 2024, an increase of more than 50% from the previous year. In 2025, the global nicotine pouch market was worth nearly $7 billion, the WHO report noted.

As purchases increase, Rigotti said that more data are needed on who exactly is buying the products. Although trends in youth uptake are still emerging, there are some indicators that it may be on the rise. Results from the 2025 Monitoring the Future survey revealed that about 4% of 12th graders in the US reported using nicotine pouches in the past month, up from about 1% in 2023.

Zeller noted that although uptake is even lower among younger children—about 2% of 10th graders and less than 1% of 8th graders reported past-month use—they are prone to model the behavior of older kids.

“It’s a concern and something that we need to be looking [out] for, especially since FDA only within the last year or so authorized a bunch of flavored pouch products,” he said in an interview with JAMA Medical News.

He and others emphasized that nicotine pouch use remains low in the US. But that could change with greater availability.

In January 2025, the FDA authorized 20 nicotine pouch products from Philip Morris−owned Zyn, the most popular brand in the oral tobacco and nicotine market. And this past September, the agency launched a pilot program to streamline the review process for new nicotine pouches, based on the understanding that the products pose lower health risks than combustible nicotine products like cigarettes. Under the program, the FDA authorized 6 new nicotine pouches in “record time”—including some mint flavors—determining that the benefits to adults who currently use tobacco products and switch outweigh the risks of the product, such as attracting youth and adult nonusers.

The WHO report said that as nicotine pouches have hit global markets, they’ve fallen through regulatory cracks in many nations. In total, 16 countries have banned their sale, and 32 countries regulate them in some form, including 26 that restrict nicotine pouch sales to minors; 21 that ban advertising, promotion, and sponsorship; and 5 that restrict flavors. In around 160 countries, there are no specific regulations for the pouches.

“They’ve gone global very quickly, and it takes years for countries to even realize that these products are already in the market,” Prasad said.

But even countries that have restrictions in place may struggle to carry them out effectively.

“Often, policies are passed without sufficient funding to support enforcement,” said Michelle Bover Manderski, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies.

In the US, nicotine pouches are regulated under the Tobacco Control Act, meaning their sale is restricted to adults aged 21 years or older and that they’re subject to certain marketing restrictions. But this May, citing a lack of resources, the agency announced it would not prioritize enforcement of premarket authorization requirements for nicotine pouch products (and e-cigarettes) with pending applications that have been filed and accepted, “unless they have certain presumptively underage-appealing elements” or a few other red flags like high nicotine content.

Zeller called the guidance, which does away with premarket review of pouches and vapes as long as they have pending and accepted applications, “deeply troubling.”

“It’s a get-out-of-jail-free card for companies that illegally put their products on the market,” he said.

In addition to outlining the marketing strategies used by nicotine pouch brands, the WHO report offered suggestions for countries to limit uptake among youth and adults who don’t already use tobacco.

“Comprehensive regulation is the most important piece of the recommendation,” Prasad said. “You have to find ways to bridge all of these regulatory gaps which would normally be used by the industry.”

Proposed regulations include bans or strong restrictions on flavors; strong age-verification and retail controls; clear health warnings and plain packaging; bans on advertising, promotion, and sponsorship; caps on the amount of nicotine allowed in each pouch; and taxation, partnered with strong enforcement and surveillance of use patterns and industry marketing.

Experts agreed that the lack of regulation around the world is concerning and that some of these strategies may be beneficial. Still Zeller, Rigotti, and Bover Manderski all mentioned that they would have liked to see some acknowledgment that the products don’t carry all the risks of cigarettes and vapes.

“I was disappointed that the regulatory recommendations that were made, to my mind, were basically treating pouch products like any other category of tobacco products, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me given where they fit on a spectrum of relative risk,” said Zeller, who agreed there should be an enforced minimum age requirement and certain marketing restrictions. Rigotti emphasized the need for more research into the products’ potential for smoking cessation, as well as the continued surveillance of youth use to prevent what happened with e-cigarettes.

“We don’t want youth using products that contain nicotine, and so we want to do what we can to reduce the risk of a youth uptake in these products,” Bover Manderski said. “But at the same time, these products may offer a less harmful alternative for people who are smoking cigarettes.”