Your snus gives me the ick

Stop Zyn-ing on dates with me!

Something strange started happening during dates with men this time last year. Out of nowhere, they were all lifting up their top lip and squishing a tiny, tea bag-like pouch inside their mouth – they were all popping nicotine pouches. The papery pods are super strong, these men would be sure to emphasise, stacked with up to 50mg of nicotine, equivalent to more than a whole pack of cigarettes (a vape typically contains up to 40mg of nicotine, across roughly 700 puffs).

The mid-date appeal of a supersonic nicotine hit was lost on me. Surely half of what’s satisfying about smoking (even vaping) is the physicality of it, the hypnotic motion of inhaling and exhaling, the tactility of doing something with your hands, needing to pause, to sit by a window or go outside? Unlike smoking, which has obvious sex appeal, there is nothing remotely chic or suave about fiddling with your mouth and wedging a rectangular pouch next to your gum. And weirdly, it seemed like men were doing it way more than women.

In December, researchers at UCL’s Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care published a study that confirmed my hunch: young British men were, in fact, using nicotine pouches at a disproportionately high rate. One in 13 (7.5 per cent) males aged 16 to 24 now use nicotine pouches, compared to 1.9 per cent of young women and 1 per cent of the general adult population. The researchers estimated that across all ages, 72 per cent of nicotine pouch users were males. How did these smoking-alternatives become so male-coded? What was it about the products that was appealing, specifically, to men?

Nicotine pouches popped up in the UK relatively recently. The products originated from Sweden in the Noughties, when changes in tobacco regulation triggered a goldrush of nicotine product innovation. Zyn, the brand that has become the “ketchup” of nicotine pouches, arrived in the UK in 2019, and was acquired by tobacco giant Philip Morris International in 2022.

Unlike vapes or cigarettes, the sachets release nicotine into the body without inhalation, which avoids lung damage. But they are not risk free. As well as being highly addictive, nicotine consumption has a variety of health risks including an increased likelihood of cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal disorders. And yet health-conscious “Zynfluencers” have embraced the products, using hashtags like #lockedin, #solider and #zynspirational. In 2022, 92 million nicotine pouches were purchased in the UK in 2022. The following year, sales surged by 54.6 per cent.

Now consider the fact that, unlike vapes or cigarettes, there is currently no law that restricts children from purchasing nicotine pouches in the UK. One in eight 14 to 17-year-olds are already using them – and there is no limit to how much nicotine the pouches can contain. The products are sometimes sold in vibrantly coloured packaging, mimicking the branding of popular sweets, as a BBC Scotland report revealed. There have already been reports of children partaking in dangerous stunts – competing how many nicotine pouches they can keep in their mouth. Since then, hospitals have reported a spike in admissions following children swallowing them. (Zyn says on its website that the products are for “adult use only” and that “children and adolescents should never use nicotine pouches under any circumstances”).

Nicotine pouches have become especially prolific in high performance-driven, physically demanding fields of work. In the UK, close to one in five professional footballers use snus or nicotine pouches, while a recent JAMA study revealed that 24 per cent of active-duty service members had used nicotine pouches in the past month. Capitalism has long been linked to the use of stimulants – so this conflation of nicotine (which can temporarily increase alertness and cognitive function) and high performance is not new. The introduction of caffeine into Europe in the 17th century enabled workers to transcend their circadian rhythms, fuelling coffee drinkers with what felt like more energy to work longer hours.

But coffee became cigarettes became snus, and Samuel Pepys became Don Draper became… something else. As manosphere influencers promote a culture of lifemaxxing, hustling and optimization, these super-strength nicotine have boomed in popularity. They are evoked as the diesel of self-improvement and heightened sexual performance. Manosphere influencer Andrew Tate wrote on X: “Nicotine and caffeine together give you fire blood, it’s literally what I run on”. The then director of communications for the far-right organisation State Freedom Caucus Network, told Semafor in 2024 that “[Liberals] fear a society when a man wakes up in the morning, drinks black coffee, pops a cool mint upper decky, and takes on the world… A man with nicotine, protein, caffeine, and creatine coursing through his veins is an unstoppable force.”

In 2024, Tucker Carlson even launched his own nicotine pouch company, ALP, positioning it as the more masculine alternative to Zyn. He told the Wall Street Journal that Zyn is “a ladies brand” and “not a brand for men”. Meanwhile, ALP’s Instagram is filled with videos of men doing traditionally masculine things: MMA, fishing, hunting. Many of the captions emphasise virility and physical strength. “The patriotism unleashed in my brain when I pop an ALP”; “ALP is for men who don’t apologize for who they are”; “How many ALPs does it take for you to take down a 10.5 ft ‘gator?” Dr Harry Tattan-Birch, lead author of the UCL study, theorised that more deeply “aggressive advertising” geared at men may be one factor for the “Zynsurgency”‘s gender split.

The intensity of the high may also factor into the product’s mass male appeal. One 27-year-old civil servant who lives in London told me that he felt “proud” when he first tried a nicotine pouch. “I was like, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of people around me who have not been able to handle this, but I’m able to,’” he told me. The sachet stung his mouth, but unlike his other male friends, he didn’t throw up. “It’s a big hit, and I think it’s often like a: ‘I can handle this’ type of thing, ‘I’m a man’s man,’” he said. “There’s a bit of camaraderie.”

It hadn’t even crossed my mind that the men who’d popped nicotine pouches in front of me could have been showing off (the spectacle was certainly lost on me). If anything I’d assumed they were a bit embarrassed by the habit. Instead it turned out to be yet another stage for masculinity and capitalism to perform their famous dance on. I’m not sure what Big Nicotine has in its PR pipeline for 2026, but I can safely say that while I’m very impressed that men can handle the nicotine buzz, the spectacle is certainly no aphrodisiac for me.

[Further reading: AI teddy bears should not give bondage advice]