Behind the Swedish Model: The Real Issues for the Industry Concerning Nicotine Pouches

Nicotine pouches are experiencing rapid growth in Europe, particularly among young people, attracted by aggressive marketing and a wide range of flavors. Poorly regulated, these products are raising growing public health concerns. While several countries have banned them or are considering doing so, the industry is using the Swedish example to promote their use, touting their supposed harm-reducing effects. But this interpretation is widely contested.

A booming product, popular with young people

In recent years, nicotine pouches, also known as "pouches," have experienced explosive growth in the European market. Available in the form of small pouches placed under the lip, without tobacco or combustion, they appeal due to their apparent discretion, the diversity of their flavors, and their marketing calibrated for young people.

Advertising for these products often relies on "lifestyle" arguments, associating their use with modern aesthetic codes and a "clean" and socially acceptable image. Adding to this is the lack of regulation in many countries: nicotine pouches fall outside the scope of the European Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), which leads manufacturers to market them outside of strict health frameworks.

Faced with the rise of these products, several European countries—including Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Ireland—have recently banned and expressed their intention to ban their sale. This response is part of a broader effort to prevent a new epidemic of nicotine addiction among young people, particularly those who have never smoked.

The "Swedish model": a central argument for the tobacco industry

For several years, the tobacco industry has been presenting the Swedish case as a benchmark for reducing smoking. Through well-oiled rhetoric, manufacturers claim that Sweden is about to become the first country in the world to reach the threshold of 5,% daily smokers. This success, they say, is mainly due to the massive adoption of alternative nicotine products, such as snus and nicotine pouches.

This discourse, widely relayed in reports sponsored by the tobacco industry such as the recent report Power in a Pouch (Smoke Free Sweden[1]), aims to legitimize nicotine pouches as public health tools that are effective, innovative, and adapted to modern uses. The report emphasizes in particular the role of these products in reducing smoking among women, highlighting a 49% decline in female tobacco consumption between 2016 and 2024. Added to this are testimonials praising their discretion, their aesthetics, and their compatibility with an active and socially exposed lifestyle.

In its rhetoric, the industry is promoting a so-called "harm reduction" approach: it would no longer be a question of eliminating nicotine use, but of offering forms deemed "less harmful" than cigarettes. In Sweden, this strategy has received political support, notably through the official inclusion of the harm reduction principle in the national public health policy in 2024. The Swedish government, pushed by the tobacco manufacturers' lobby, even recently opposed plans to ban nicotine pouches in France and Spain, sending "reasoned opinions" to the European Commission, arguing that these restrictions could compromise public health efforts in the European Union.

This positioning is being exploited by the tobacco industry to strengthen its lobbying efforts in other Member States. By promoting the Swedish experience, it seeks to convince policymakers that these products can contribute to the European targets for reducing smoking by 2040. This strategy is based on a simplistic and biased narrative that obscures a significant part of the reality.

A partial and contested reading because it does not conform to the Swedish situation

The narrative promoted by the tobacco industry and its allies around the “Swedish success story”[2] is based on a biased reading of public health data. By exclusively promoting the use of snus and then nicotine pouches as drivers of the decline in smoking, this discourse deliberately obscures other determining factors and neglects the risks linked to the normalization of these products.

Researchers and public health professionals have demonstrated that Sweden has not become a low-smoking country solely due to the use of alternative nicotine products. The decline in smoking there long predates the introduction of nicotine pouches (2016) and is the result of a coherent, long-term public policy to combat tobacco use: high taxation on cigarettes, smoke-free spaces, early awareness-raising, compliance with the ban on sales to minors in place since 2007, social norms against tobacco use, accessibility to cessation treatments, and strong public adherence to public health messages.

The alleged effectiveness of nicotine pouches as a cessation tool is also questionable. The studies cited in reports favoring these products are mostly funded or supported by stakeholders linked to the tobacco industry or organizations promoting harm reduction for commercial gain. These documents are based on self-reported surveys of satisfied users, without any long-term independent evaluation.

Furthermore, data is still lacking on the medium- and long-term effects of nicotine pouches, particularly with regard to their addictive potential, their impact on cardiovascular function, and the risk of dual use with cigarettes. Far from being clinically validated cessation devices like nicotine replacement products (such as patches, gum), these products are designed and marketed as consumer goods, with high variability in nicotine concentration and a strong loyalty strategy.

Finally, by integrating nicotine pouches into a logic of normalizing nicotine use, this model maintains a dependency on this substance instead of encouraging people to overcome the addiction. It also contributes to confusing prevention messages, particularly among young people, by promoting the idea that there is a "clean," acceptable, or even healthy way to consume nicotine—a dangerously misleading perception. By appropriating the "Swedish success," the tobacco industry is primarily seeking to reposition its products on an increasingly regulated European market, to delay or avoid bans, and to gain access to decision-making circles under the guise of expertise. This strategy raises major challenges for the implementation of independent public health policies based on objective scientific data.

Thus, if Sweden is indeed on the verge of achieving a smoking prevalence below 5 %, it owes it to a combination of structural and political factors. Reducing this success to the use of nicotine pouches constitutes an oversimplification, exploited by an industry seeking to reposition its products in an increasingly demanding regulatory environment, anti-tobacco activists point out.

©Generation Without Tobacco

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[1] The Smoke Free Sweden initiative was launched in 2023 by "Health Diplomates" managed by Delon Human, having collaborated with the manufacturer British American Tobacco https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/delon-human/

[2] The Swedish Experience, Tobacco Tactics, last updated May 15, 2025, accessed June 17, 2025