As the world continues grappling with the devastating impact of cigarettes and, more recently, electronic cigarettes, another addictive product is rapidly gaining ground, often faster than governments can respond.

These products are small, nicotine-filled sachets you tuck between your lip and gum. They are discreet, producing no smoke or vapour, but they are highly addictive and harmful, especially to young people.

While awareness of these products remains low among policymakers in many countries, the industry behind them is moving quickly to normalise their use, especially among young people. Now, nicotine pouches are everywhere: airports, train stations, supermarkets, music festivals, and across social media feeds.

The speed of sales growth is striking: the global nicotine pouch market grew 57% in a single year — from US$4.7 billion in 2022 to $7.4 billion in 2023.

This is not a coincidence. It reflects a deliberate industry strategy to expand and sustain nicotine use through aggressive marketing that positions these products as discreet, modern, socially acceptable, and safer alternatives to smoking, often in ways that reach far beyond adult smokers trying to quit.

Through Canary, a real-time media monitoring service, we've seen nicotine pouches increasingly promoted across lifestyle and cultural spaces. Brands have appeared at Formula 1 races and large music festivals, and released limited-edition products aimed at younger, trend-conscious consumers. Products are embedded in beach, fitness, music, and nightlife culture with no health warnings or advertising disclosures. Content like this doesn't look like advertising, which means it can fall outside regulations written for traditional advertising environments.

Beyond digital spaces, in some countries products have been sold near schools, displayed beside candy, or placed at children's eye level in stores, while sleek designs and fruit flavours do the rest of the work.

What worries us is how quickly this normalisation is happening, before many governments have had the chance to respond. We’re left asking whether existing tobacco control policies are equipped to deal with this rapidly evolving form of nicotine marketing.

We’ve seen this pattern before with e-cigarettes. By the time policymakers and public health officials grasped the scale of the problem, these products were culturally embedded and commercially entrenched. Families, underfunded clinics, and treatment programmes are still absorbing those costs. Nicotine pouches are following the same trajectory.

Existing policies were built around combustible products and broadcast advertising. They weren't designed for influencer culture, lifestyle content, or online communities where promotion is often indistinguishable from personal, unpaid posts. Governments need rules that reflect how nicotine is actually marketed now.

Regulations must keep pace with rapidly evolving platforms and be written broadly enough that they don’t become obsolete when the next app replaces TikTok or Instagram. Stronger monitoring systems, built in collaboration with civil society, are also needed to track both direct and indirect nicotine marketing online.

Clearer regulatory authority and stronger legal protections are critical to preventing tobacco companies from continuing to market nicotine products to young people.

The window to get ahead of this is narrowing. Vital Strategies and STOP are tracking industry tactics, how nicotine pouch markets are expanding, online and in stores, and working with governments and partners to turn that evidence into policy before the market sets the terms.