The World Health Organization’s first-ever report dedicated to nicotine pouches, a 152-page document titled “Exposing marketing tactics and strategies driving the global growth of nicotine pouches,” which was released May 15 ahead of World No Tobacco Day, has drawn sharp criticism from scientists and tobacco harm reduction advocates, according to Filter. The report warns of the products’ rapid global expansion and aggressive marketing toward young people, with the WHO’s Dr. Vinayak Prasad noting that regulation is struggling to keep pace. Critics’ central objection is that the report omits the role pouches can play in harm reduction.
The article emphasizes that nicotine pouches contain no tobacco, are used between gum and lip without combustion, and sit at the lowest end of the risk continuum, described by some research as roughly 100 times safer than smoking. With about 1.3 billion tobacco users worldwide and over 7 million associated deaths annually, advocates argue a large population could benefit from switching. Nancy Loucas of CAPHRA contended the report pushes a “prohibitionist narrative” and appears to override the WHO’s own Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, whose Article 1(d) explicitly includes harm reduction within tobacco control. British expert Clive Bates argued the report focuses on nicotine delivery rather than disease risk and called it “fundamentally misleading,” accusing it of spotlighting outlier products like candy branding and super-strength variants to provoke outrage.
The piece points to Sweden, where easy access to snus and pouches has helped achieve the world’s lowest smoking rate at 3.7 percent, and to South Asia as regions where pouches hold harm-reduction potential. It also cites Canada’s 2024 pouch restrictions, which limited flavors, confined sales to pharmacies, and curbed advertising, as a cautionary case, with pharmacist Todderick Prochnau noting that the clampdown fueled an illicit market with higher-nicotine, non-age-gated products while potentially keeping some adults on cigarettes. Critics objected in particular to the WHO’s recommendations for flavor bans, high taxes, and nicotine-content caps, arguing higher-strength pouches can be key to keeping heavy smokers off cigarettes.
