Emilia Waddington-González – “[Cigarettes are] the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users.”
That was the warning issued by the FDA in 2018 that helped usher in a new wave of regulation and litigation aimed at curbing Big Tobacco’s grip on nicotine addiction. However, while the public health strategies evolved, so did the industry’s tactics. Cigarettes may have lost cultural capital, but the business model behind them remains unchanged. Zyn represents the next phase in a long-standing pattern: target youth, exploit regulatory gaps, and rebrand addiction as innovation.
Despite decades of litigation, legislation, and public health campaigns, the nicotine industry continues to thrive—not by changing its core product, but by disguising it.
In 2022, Philip Morris International (PMI) acquired Swedish Match, the company responsible for making Zyn, and with it, secured dominance in the smokeless nicotine pouch market. Zyn’s design is sleek, odorless, and discreet—a pouch that gained popularity for its ability to deliver high doses of nicotine without smoke or vapor. On the surface, Zyn appears to be a form of harm reduction. While the products have evolved, the core danger has not. Addiction is not a flaw in Philip Morris’ system—it is the foundation upon which the system was intentionally built. Zyn is a re-engineered delivery mechanism for the same addictive substance that has defined Big Tobacco’s profit model for over a century.
The numbers are staggering. Zyn sales exploded from $710,000 in 2016 to over $216 million by 2020, and PMI has since invested millions into new U.S. production facilities, including a $232 million plant in Kentucky. In January 2025, the FDA granted market authorization for twenty Zyn products—despite a 641% increase in youth pouch usage from 2019 to 2022 and data showing that only 2.9% of U.S. adults have ever used the product. These numbers paint a clear picture: this is not merely a tool to stop smoking. Zyn is becoming the new face of nicotine addiction.
And it is not an unfamiliar story. Philip Morris has never shied away from youth-oriented marketing; it has relied on it. Internal company documents openly identified teenagers as “replacement smokers.” The iconic Marlboro Man may be gone, but the tactics remain: flavored products, vibrant packaging, sleek branding, and strategic sponsorships. In the 1990s, Marlboro dominated adolescent cigarette use. Today, Zyn is following the same path.
The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) was supposed to end this cycle. It imposed $200 billion in damages and banned billboards, cartoon mascots, and event sponsorships targeting youth. However, instead of changing course, PMI adapted. When cigarette ads were restricted, the company pivoted to smokeless tobacco. When those products faced scrutiny, it leaned into e-cigarettes. Now, with mounting regulations on vapes, it has shifted again- this time to oral nicotine pouches.
Nicotine exposure has profound effects on multiple systems of the body, well beyond addiction. It raises blood pressure, disrupts insulin sensitivity, increases the risk of stroke, and impairs cardiovascular health. It promotes tumor growth by blocking the body’s ability to kill off abnormal cells naturally. Chronic exposure can also trigger oxidative stress and cellular damage, increasing the risk of cancer—especially when paired with other environmental factors.
In adolescents, the damage is even more severe. Nicotine alters dopamine and neurotransmitter function in the developing brain, rewiring reward and motivation systems and increasing long-term susceptibility to addiction. It can also impair memory, attention, and learning capacity, consequences that are often invisible in the short term but devastating over time.
Some states are beginning to push back. In 2024, Florida passed House Bill 1007, a first-of-its-kind law requiring all nicotine dispensing devices sold in the state to be registered with the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco. Any unregistered product is considered contraband and is subject to seizure and destruction. The bill aims to close the loopholes that new products like Zyn exploit. It also restricts packaging and marketing that could appeal to youth.
Florida joins a growing list of states—including California, Massachusetts, and New York—that have taken steps to restrict flavored nicotine products and protect adolescents from targeted marketing. However, these are piecemeal solutions to a nationwide problem.\ Without coordinated federal regulation, Big Tobacco will continue to play regulatory whack-a-mole, shifting strategies, exploiting new technologies, and using delay as a defense. Moving forward, we can expect increased scrutiny from both federal and state regulators, particularly around the classification, labeling, and marketing of products like Zyn. Regulatory bodies such as the FDA may face pressure to tighten the premarket review process for new nicotine products and revisit the standards for “modified risk” claims. Meanwhile, lawmakers could pursue broader federal legislation aimed at closing loopholes that allow oral nicotine pouches to avoid the strict marketing restrictions placed on traditional tobacco and vaping products.
For the industry, this signals a riskier business environment with greater compliance costs, heightened litigation exposure, and potential limits on marketing strategies that have fueled recent growth. For consumers, especially adolescents, it could mean increased protections, but only if regulations keep pace with industry innovation. As legal frameworks evolve, companies like Philip Morris will be forced to either adapt to a more heavily regulated market or face escalating legal challenges like those that crippled Big Tobacco in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Zyn is not a public health innovation. It is a corporate response to declining cigarette sales and rising regulation. This is part of a long-term strategy that prioritizes shareholder value at the expense of public health. It succeeds, not because it is new, but because it is familiar.
From hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes in the 1800s, to Marlboro in the 1950s, to Juul in the 2010s, and now to Zyn—the industry’s goal of creating lifetime users has never changed. Only the tool that fuels the addiction has.
