SCIENCE INSIDE | NicoLeaks Supercharges Nicotine Pouch Testing | RegWatch

So for the uninitiated, what are nicotine pouches?

Nicotine pouches are actually pretty simple products in the scheme of things.

They're similar to the traditional Swedish snus product in that it's like a little pouch that you place under your top lip.

But the traditional snus product is made of tobacco, whereas the modern nicotine pouches have no tobacco at all.

So you have a substrate to hold the pure nicotine.

And in addition to the nicotine, you have flavors because people like flavors and tend to use flavored rather than non-flavored or tobacco flavor pouches.

And then there are some other things like stabilizers to make sure that the pH is correct.

And, you know, there are good reasons for that.

And, you know, say moisture, water.

So they're pretty simple in the scheme of things.

How important of a role have pouches been so far in helping smokers quit?

Yeah, I think I can speak to that.

I mean, I didn't quit with nicotine pouches, but I have quit and now I use nicotine pouches.

I think that how they help people quit depends on how people understand how they work.

And know pouches have been around for about 10 years now um but some people are just becoming aware of them

um i would add to what lindsay said about the role of nicotine pouches or the potential role of nicotine pouches in switching um They haven't been around for a long time, so there isn't a lot of long-term data, say like there is for vapes and vapes e-cigarettes.

So there's a lot of switching studies been done on vapes and e-cigarettes, but not so for nicotine pouches.

But the thing that we do see across the board in different countries, like if we look at the US and the UK, they're very important markets for nicotine pouches.

And there have been some studies done of nicotine pouch users.

What is the typical nicotine pouch user? And for the most part, we are seeing that nicotine pouch users are people who either use nicotine in some form before, usually smoking or chewing tobacco or vaping, or they're currently using it.

So I would say that the story of nicotine pouches at the moment is looking that it's about switching rather than starting.

But as time goes by and we get more data, we'd be able to have a better understanding of what it means.

In our lead, I mentioned FDA's modified risk tobacco product authorization for Zin in the U.S. Why is this authorization important?

People who already use nicotine need to understand that if they use a different form, they can lower the risk of diseases.

The message we really need to get across to people who smoke in the US and around the world is that you can use nicotine without having the high risk of the diseases that everyone worries about with smoking and nicotine.