Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) call this week to further regulate the tobaccoless nicotine pouch Zyn has rekindled medical debates over the safety of nicotine, especially for children.
Schumer on Monday called on federal agencies to investigate the marketing practices of Philip Morris International, owners of Zyn, calling the product “a pouch full of problems,” and issued a warning to parents.
“Kids know what Zyn is. Their parents don’t,” the senator said.
Schumer cited medical data that nicotine use among children and teenagers causes problems with neurological development, permanently changing the maturing brain. Specifically, nicotine has been found to alter the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, the areas of the brain responsible for decision-making and concentration.
For adults, however, nicotine has mixed reviews among public health experts.
“Nicotine is definitely overhyped as a dangerous thing,” libertarian Cato Institute drug policy expert Jeffery Singer told the Washington Examiner. “Everything in moderation and all that, but it’s not an evil, dangerous drug packed with health problems.”
Singer, with over 35 years of medical experience as a general surgeon, argued that nicotine itself is not as dangerous for adults as may presume.
Nicotine has similar biological effects as caffeine, narrowing blood vessels and contributing to an elevated risk of high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat, and insomnia with continued use. Both caffeine and nicotine are stimulants, but nicotine also has calming effects of reducing stress and pain while increasing mental acuity.
Some studies have also found that nicotine may be beneficial for patients with mental health and neurological disorders, including depression, Tourette syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, and schizophrenia.
Although tobacco contains many cancer-causing chemicals, including arsenic, formaldehyde, and benzene, nicotine alone has not been found to be a carcinogen. According to a 2016 study, however, 75% of adults either believe the myth that nicotine is a carcinogen or are unsure about the relationship between nicotine and cancer.
Public Health England launched a campaign in 2018 to communicate that e-cigarettes or vaping products using tobaccoless nicotine are 95% less harmful than traditional tobacco. The British National Health Service strongly encourages patients to switch to tobaccoless nicotine products when trying to quit smoking, even telling pregnant patients that nicotine products without tobacco are safer than continuing to smoke.
Zyn and similar nicotine pouch products have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for smoking cessation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only endorses FDA-approved products for addiction and dependency treatment.
Because of the rapidly evolving market for tobaccoless nicotine, including e-cigarettes, the Surgeon General in 2020 said it is “difficult to make generalizations about efficacy for [smoking] cessation.” The CDC also says the evidence for the usefulness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation is “suggestive but not sufficient.”
The agency has no publicly available data on tobaccoless nicotine apart from its literature on e-cigarettes, which are considered dangerous because of both nicotine and some carcinogenic materials.
Schumer accused the makers of Zyn of using “the social media to hook” children on nicotine, adding that so-called Zynfluencers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok “have made nicotine pouches part of their online personalities.”
Philip Morris International told the Washington Examiner that it has a companywide policy on not marketing products to anyone under 21, especially popular products like Zyn.
A study from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids published in December found that advertisements for tobaccoless nicotine products from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco were viewed more than 3.4 billion times across Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, with the majority of content appearing on Instagram. The study estimated that this content reached approximately 16 million youths under the age of 18.
“Tobacco companies are among the most sophisticated advertisers in the world – marketing that reaches millions of kids does not happen by accident,” said Yolonda Richardson, president and CEO of CTFK, in response to the study, urging governments to further regulate tobacco marketing online.
Although the teenage use of e-cigarettes has decreased by roughly 14% due to federal regulations on selling the products to those under 18, a recent FDA survey found that approximately 2.8 million youth below 18 still use tobacco and nicotine products.
Nearly 3% of students in middle school and high school use nicotine pouches and other oral nicotine products, such as gum or lozenges, while another 8% use e-cigarettes.
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Singer argued that even if there are risks to youths for the use of nicotine products, restricting Zyn and similar products is “ill-advised and counterproductive.”
“Fear-driven public policy usually doesn’t end up well,” Singer said. “It’s very dangerous to make public policy for adults motivated by concern of what young people might do.”
