Front Burner - Zyn, Zonnic, and the nicotine pouch craze

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Snus in Sweden, Zyn all over TikTok and now, Zonnic in Canada. Nicotine pouches have been gaining profile, from Major League baseball dugouts to Joe Rogan’s podcast. What are they? How are they different from vapes, dip and cigarettes? Are they a helpful tool for people looking to quit, or just hooking a new generation? First, freelance journalist Ashwin Rodrigues takes us through the product’s rise in the U.S. and then CBC’s Marina von Stackelberg tells us why Zonnic, the brand being sold in Canada, is already controversial. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Elaine Chao. Upper Dekke. Zimbabwe. Gum pillows. Whether those terms mean anything to you might depend on your social media algorithm. In or out, zins.

Oh, hell yeah. In. So in. Why not? Little lip pillow. Lip pillow. In. Love zins. In. Always in. So in. Why not? A little lip pillow. Lip pillow. In? Love zins. In. Always in. Always in. Okay, why are they always in? Because they make the night better.

F*** vaping. Zin, Snus in Sweden, and now Zonic in Canada are all names for nicotine pouches. They've been showing up all over the place, from Major League Baseball dugouts to the Joe Rogan experience. Recently, a novel non-tobacco nicotine product, Zin, has been developed. It's similar to snus. I never knew how to say that. Okay, thank you. I think.

However, it contains no nitrosamines. Is that the word? Nitrosamines? Or polysilic hydrocarbons. Okay, what does that mean? I don't know. What did they just say? But as the pouches gain popularity, people are also pretty divided about them. Some say they're a helpful tool for people looking to quit smoking or vaping. Let me put my Zins in. I'm not vaping anymore. There you go. Good for you.

I had to quit because my mom hates it. Others are more cynical. Soaring sales worldwide have led some European countries to actually ban the product. Later in the episode, I'll talk to the CBC's Marina von Stackelberg about Zonic. That's the nicotine pouch that just hit store shelves in Canada last month. But first, Ashwin Rodriguez is a freelance journalist who's reported on the nicotine pouches for GQ. He's here to explain what they are, what all the hype's about, and what big tobacco has to do with it.

Hi, Ashwin. How are you? I'm good. How's it going? I'm well, I'm well. So I know that these nicotine pouches are all over social media, but let's just start with what they actually are. So like, what are these nicotine pouches and how do they work? Nicotine pouches typically come in a can of about 15 or 20 pouches, and they're filled with like a white nicotine powder that's derived from tobacco. And that's different from usual products that you see in that type of container, which is

usually smokeless tobacco, which contains actual ground tobacco leaves amongst a bunch of other things. Right. So this isn't chewing tobacco, like where you put the tobacco leaves in your cheek and suck on them and then you have to like constantly spit out brown tobacco goo. Like that's not what this is. Correct. Yeah. So you don't need a water bottle full of brown goo at your desk. There are lots of brands offering pouches in different flavors as well. Yeah. So I'll use the example here in the States. The company with the largest market share is Zinn, and they have cool mint, peppermint,

wintergreen, spearmint, menthol, chill. And those are just like the minty flavors but they also have cinnamon citrus and coffee so asides from coffee it's kind of what i would expect for gum flavors right um and i also was looking at their uk website where they have fancier flavors like bellini and espressino oh espressino, which I think is a made up word. And like the way, yeah, and the packaging as well is quite similar to gum. Yeah, so it's very bright and, you know, kind of fun. And that's my description, not Zinn's, you know, very poppy colors and usually positioned

at like a very prominent place at a point of sale in a deli or I don't know if you use the term bodega in Canada. We don't quite use the term bodega. I would say like dépanneur in like Montreal would be another term, but we are familiar with the bodega term. Okay. Yeah. We're very obnoxious about that term here. So I figured. What are the rules like around who can buy Zins in the U.S.? So in the U.S., it's 21 plus. You know, usually they check your ID just like you would if you were buying a pack of cigarettes or a vape. You know, you mentioned Zin.

That particular brand has really become a cultural phenomenon as well, right? Like there's like this meme of the Pope where someone has replaced the communion wafer with a zintin. You know, one of our producers the other day found a photo online of a flag that says Zin Laden over top of an image of Osama bin Laden decked out in like topical branded sunglasses and a sash. And, and like, what does that say to you about who this is for? It seems like based on the personalities, at least that are, you know, talking about this stuff online and making these kinds of memes, a kind of young frat white dude. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could rip upper-neckies in his

upper-neckie-lit pillows for that? Who likes to, you know, kind of make up these nicknames and memes for these things. Yo, do you have any extra, um, Zinni Crosby for me, buddy? I got a couple Monica Lazinskis. You know, they call Zins Zimbabwe's, which then morphed into African sugar as a riff on Zimbabwe.

They call them gum pillows. But the thing that's really funny to me about all of this is one of the pitches and appeals of something like this is that it's a very discrete product. So to consume it and make an online personality about it in such a flashy way seems very ironic to me. Right, right. But there are kind of some notable people who have been using it and talking about it. Like I mentioned Joe Rogan in our introduction. Tucker Carlson also said that he's a big fan. Don't get me going. So I use it, you know, every second I'm awake and in bed. I'm not embarrassed of it. Do you sleep with one in or no? I don't because I don't want to choke on it. But seconds I read in bed. So seconds before

I fall asleep, I take it out. I've never had one of my dogs eat a Zin pouch, though I'm not against it. And you've kind of written about these like Zinfluencers on TikTok, right? And tell me a bit more about them. Yeah. And that was something that I actually came across through reporting the piece where we had discovered it was a phenomenon outside of TikTok. First, I'm not really on there that much. But then again, like i found it very fascinating that people were creating a personality you know i checked today and videos tagged with zin have over 292 million views but yeah again it's just like very fratty and i think it's just become part of a routine you know like people talk about waking up having their their coffee, having their Zin. And it's kind of become a big thing in the kind of biohacking world, right? Like where like people kind of switch up their diet or lifestyle for improvements to their health.

In the biohacking world, nicotine in general is considered a nootropic or cognitive enhancer. Nicotine is an amazing nootropic. Loveotropic, but the delivery device will kill you. Vaping's not good for you. Smoking's not good for you. Dipping's not good for you. Snuffing's not good for you. In Scandinavia, they use the little Zin pouches and you can focus like a laser. And I don't know.

Not necessarily just nicotine pouches, but you've seen people experimenting with nicotine patches as well for benefits such as like mental clarity and concentration. You know, Zyn was introduced in the U.S. in 2016. And just how huge is it now? I was looking at a study and it says that nicotine pouch sales increased from 126 million units from August to December 2019 to over 800 million units from January to March 22. And that's with Zinn holding nearly 60% market share. So it has blown up. And I think the reasons for that are multiple. You know, they can be a cheaper, reduced risk alternative to smoking is what Zinn has said. And what I will also say is that it seems that the people are, you know, trying to move away from cigarettes and people are to some extent seeming to try to move away from vaping. So I think, you know, there's a clear appeal there.

So I think, you know, there's a clear appeal there. I also want to get into a little bit about, you know, the market for these things are not just in the U.S. They have a global appeal and they're particularly huge in Sweden. And there it's called snus and it comes in two versions, one that contains tobacco, one that's got synthetic nicotine like we have in the US and Canada. And can you tell me a little bit about its popularity over there? Yeah. So based on my research and what I've seen, like it's obviously a huge part of the culture there. But one of the things that I was reading, and this is like right from the Swedish match website, is that Napoleon apparently was a major snus user. And I will note, just so people don't think I'm an ignorant American, that Napoleon was not Swedish. But snus really popped off there

apparently like in the late 1960s when the dangers of smoking started to be like really more well known. It's almost like what happened in Sweden kind of set the stage for its popularity elsewhere in the world. Yeah. I mean, if it became popular because they wanted to get off smoking, they were like, you know, decades ahead of the trend. How much of that is what's happening now is unclear. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

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Coming back to something that you mentioned earlier, you know, the tobacco companies that produce these pouches, they really tout them as a better alternative to smoking cigarettes. And, you know, how accurate is that? Like, what do we actually know about the safety of products like Zin? safety of products like Zyn. So the thing that's interesting is that since this is a not overnight success, but relatively quick success and relatively new product, the long term health impact is kind of still unknown. And in reporting out the story that I did in speaking with experts, they were open to the idea that people could use these for, you know, quitting smoking or transitioning off of vaping, but there's not any really hard data to support that. And the same goes for the

risks in terms of having long-term data of the health impact specifically of nicotine pouches. of the health impact specifically of nicotine pouches. But we've seen like irritation of the gums and sometimes like GI upset and things like that. People who are not even trying to raise alarms, they're like, hey, don't use this brand because it did this to my gums and they'll show you. So these nicotine pouches are made by tobacco companies, you know, and some of the context here is cigarette sales aren't what they used to be. You know, more recently, vapes like Juul exploded, but regulators briefly banned Juul pods last year. And that might end up actually being a more permanent ban. And just kind of based on what we've seen from the tobacco industry in the past, what do you think might be behind the hype over these pouches?

It's complicated, but I think if your business is this thing that is no longer popular and has such a proven host of horrible health effects and you still are accountable to your shareholders, you have to do something. And, you know, it's very interesting that they all have a very similar line. Like I was looking Imperial Tobacco Canada, talking about rolling out the pouches said, it's part of our journey to create a better tomorrow. And Philip Morris talks about delivering a smoke-free future. And Altria, another big one, talks about moving beyond smoking. So it's kind of a known thing that people should quit smoking if they can. And I do think there is space for providing those people with some kind of off ramp. But if you are also creating early users of nicotine, and then maybe if they end up becoming smokers later, I don't think that would really hurt their feelings as much as it would

help their bottom line. And, you know And Juul maybe flew too close to the sun because they marketed their product to children for a while and they had to pay $462 million for it. Cynically, you can imagine that if you're not careful about how it's regulated and how it's accessed as a visual trend, I'm sure it will go away. But I'm not sure it will in terms of, you know, usage. And again, when you have a highly addictive product, you know, that helps a lot. Thanks, Ashwin, for your insight. Really

appreciated this conversation. Likewise. Thanks for having me. Zyn isn't legally available here in Canada, but a similar product was approved for sale in July. It's called Zonic, and it's been marketed as a nicotine replacement therapy. And right now you can actually buy it at convenience stores and gas stations across the country. Marina von Stackelberg is a senior reporter with CBC's Parliamentary Bureau in Ottawa. And she's here to tell us how Zonic is being received here in Canada.

Hey Marina. Hey Marina. Hey there. So Zonic is made by Imperial Tobacco Canada, which also makes Du Maurier cigarettes. It's part of the company that manufactures Camel, Lucky Strike, and it's really marketed as a nicotine replacement therapy. So how is Zonic being regulated right now? You know, who can or can't buy these nicotine pouches? Well, health groups say essentially anyone can buy them, and that includes children. It's basically completely legal for stores to sell them to anyone. There would be no charges, no fines. Now, the label on the package says it's for 18 and older, and that's what the company

says. But health groups say that's basically useless because there's no regulation that prevents it from being sold to young people. Right. And this was actually approved by Health Canada under natural health product regulations, right? Which could be quite surprising to people. You know, why is that? Yeah. So this product doesn't have tobacco. So it doesn't fall under the Tobacco and Vaping Act. And it's not considered a prescription drug because it contains four milligrams or less of nicotine. So it falls under these natural health product regulations, which are the same ones that apply for other products that are used to help people quit smoking, like nicotine patches or gum. like nicotine patches or gum. And so it falls under this category that would then be under provincial and territorial regulations in order to put any sort of restrictions on ages. So essentially, anyone can buy it because it falls under this really specific legislation.

Right. And the rule is that if it's four milligram of nicotine and below, it can be regulated in this way. Exactly, exactly. So it's been about a month since Zonic went on sale, but there's already been, you know, a lot of concerns around it. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah, so just this week here in Ottawa, there was a press conference with six major national health organizations. We're talking about, you know, the Canadian Cancer Society, Heart and Stroke, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, and they all came out and said they were extremely concerned about this. It simply boggles the mind that Health Canada has made it legal for flavoured nicotine products

from Imperial Tobacco to be sold to children. Then they really wanted Health Canada to take some immediate action because they are extremely worried that young people are going to be sold to children. Then they really wanted Health Canada to take some immediate action because they are extremely worried that young people are going to be interested in this product. Right, and I should say that Zonic comes in a range of flavors. What is it about this product that has these health organizations so worried? Yeah, so you mentioned the flavors. We have berry frost, chill mint,

tropic breeze. Tropic breeze is not even a real flavor. It's a lifestyle aspiration. They're also really concerned about the packaging. It comes in very colorful, fun packaging. It's kind of a shape that looks like it could be like candy, a roll of gum. They're really concerned about the access to this because of the regulations that they fall under. They're not hard to find. You can get them at, you know, gas stations, convenience stores. So they're really worried about the access. Canadian Cancer Society actually showed us a photo that they took here in Ottawa just recently, and it had an ad for Zonic beside a bunch of candy bars on a counter of a convenience store.

And then of course they're really worried about the advertising. The concern is that there's a near absence of restriction on promotion of the product and it is legal to sell nicotine pouches to children of any age. There are not the restrictions in place that exist for the sale and marketing of tobacco products or vaping products. there's a huge regulatory gap. It should not be allowed to be on the market in the absence of proper regulations to protect youth. Right. And they're making the argument that the marketing around it is very much targeted at youth. It's very kind of energetic and youthful. Yeah. The campaigns show young people having fun riding in the back of Ubers together, Kind of energetic and youthful. similar to like Nicorette or, you know, patches, gums like that. But these health groups say gum, Nicorette gum, none of that is marketed in this way.

And so that's their real concern. And I should add, too, they point out that Nicorette, when it first came on the market, you needed a prescription for it, not just something that you mentioned that have these concerns, what kinds of changes do they want to see in how these products are sold? So they don't want an outright ban, but they do want the federal government to take immediate action to prevent this from getting in the hands of children. So they're offering up two options, which they say would be done, could be done easily without any sort of big legislative changes. So the first thing that could happen is it could be classified as a prescription. That's how Nicorette was first done. And so

that would prevent it from just being widely available. Or they're saying put a temporary ban on selling this until regulations can come in to ensure that children are not able to get at this product. And the other thing they want is for Canada to stop authorizing any other brands of nicotine pouches or any other sort of new nicotine products under these natural health regulations. And how has Imperial Tobacco Canada responded? So the tobacco industry says that health groups always have an issue with anything they bring onto the market. And they say they want to help people quit smoking. They want to provide alternatives for adults who want to quit and that this is an option that is safer than

cigarettes. We really believe that this product has the potential to helping adults quit smoking. If these groups were really serious about these types of product, they would raise a flag for all the cessation products that are being marketed the same way in Canada. I think they're more concerned that a tobacco company is trying to reinvent themselves, that we recognize the health risks associated with smoking, and we believe it's fair for us to put a less harmful alternative

to cigarettes on the market. They say this product is not intended for youth and that their ads target people 25 years of age and up. You know, it's worth noting here that there was a study published this week in a scientific journal called Addiction that found nicotine pouches don't do much to actually ease smokers' cravings because they take longer to hit their peak effectiveness. Yeah, and the health groups say, like, the big point that they make in the same way they had about vaping is we just really don't know much about these products,

yet Health Canada is authorizing them for use. This debate around Zonic reminds me a lot about vaping from a few years back. The discussion around vaping. And that became super popular with young people around kind of 2018. And at this point, the number of Canadian teenagers regularly using e-cigarettes are actually like some of the highest in the world. Yeah, Health Canada's data shows that 8% of teenagers in Canada vape daily. And as you mentioned, that's some of the highest rates reported globally. And that's what the health group said. They said we need to learn from what happened with vaping. And what happened was,

they say, Ottawa was too slow. They waited about a year until data came back showing that young people were vaping at these crazy high rates. And then they reigned in advertising. And the health groups say by that point, you had an entire generation addicted to these products. And they said the big concern too, with youth being exposed to this is that nicotine addiction is the most powerful if you become addicted when you are young, when you're a teenager. And so they say Health Canada needs to act quickly. They can't wait for data to come back like they did with vaping. Right, right. So Marina, there's clearly a lot of debate about how Zonic is being marketed, sold and regulated. What are the questions that you have

around what the government might do next? The big questions that I have are what is Health Canada going to do about this and the health minister? We did get a statement saying that he is deeply concerned and they're going to be looking to ensure that these products are being sold for what they've been approved for. Health Canada also told me that as part of the authorization of this product, the company does have to do mandatory annual reporting on any youth appeal or misuse. But the health groups say that's a huge issue again because it's annual reporting. So does that mean it's going to be another year until we find out if youth are using that?

The health groups say that is just too much time to take. So I'll definitely be watching to see if we have movement from Health Canada on this at all. Thank you so much, Marina, for joining us today. Absolutely. That's all for today. FrontBurner was produced this week by Rafferty Baker, Shannon Higgins, Joyta Shingupta, Lauren Donnelly, and Derek Vanderwyk.

Sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Will Yar. For more CBC Podcasts, on Monday.