(dramatic music) - [Alexander] These white pouches may be the future of the tobacco industry, but there's no tobacco inside. - The main ingredient inside
ZYN's is pure nicotine. - [Alexander] These are
ZYN Nicotine Pouches. The oral nicotine product
comes in these cans. You may have seen them for sale in convenience stores, gas stations, and even your local pharmacy, or on social media where they've birthed
a devoted subculture. - Good morning, boys. Popping a little. - [Alexander] Over the past year, sales of ZYN have skyrocketed. In the fourth quarter of 2023, 116 million cans were sold in the US, a 78% increase over the
same period a year earlier. - ZYN is definitely having a moment. - A pouch packed with problems, - [Alexander] But ZYN's remarkable success has provoked a backlash, and thrust it into the culture war. - Many people see it as a threat. - [Alexander] So what
can we learn about ZYN when we test it in a lab, and how transformative a product could ZYN be for the tobacco industry? (rhythmic music) - Today we're gonna be
finding out what's in ZYN. - [Alexander] Ben Katz is an
analytical chemist at UC Irvine specializing in mass spectrometry. Outside of his university work, Katz has been testing
nicotine pouch products, - [Influencer] What's in the pouch? Spearmint Edition. - [Alexander] And sharing the findings on his TikTok channel,
Mass Spec Everything. - Now we're gonna test a
Chill, the Winter Green. - [Alexander] Today, Katz is testing six different ZYN flavors. (rhythmic music) - Alright, so now we're gonna
be analyzing the samples on the mass spectrometer. A mass spectrometer is capable of weighing the exact mass of a molecule so that you can determine the composition of the chemical structure and identify what is in a sample. Oh, it works! In the data analysis software, we see a series of peaks. There is a common peak
that's in all of the samples, and it's the most abundant
peak in all the samples that is our nicotine peak. Based on these tests, nicotine is the bioactive molecule in ZYN, and the nicotine is the only
tobacco-related alkaloid that we can see in this product. - ZYN looks like a little teabag. It's a tiny little white pouch that tucks inside the cheek and inside, there's no tobacco leaf. There is cellulose or wood pulp, along with some artificial sweeteners, and flavorings, and nicotine. - [Alexander] In January,
Senator Chuck Schumer called for a federal
crackdown on the pouches. - I'm delivering a warning to parents because these nicotine pouches seem to lock their sights on young kids, teenagers, and even lower, and then use the social media to hook 'em. - [Alexander] This scrutiny
has in turn triggered another chapter in America's cultural war with some on the Right
declaring a ZYNsurrection Senator Thom Tillis responded on X with a message that said, "Come and take it, Chuck." - So we're gonna make
him a ZYN birthday cake. - [Alexander] Fueling ZYN's rise are self-styled Zynfluencers who feature the nicotine pouches in their social media content. ♪ Upper-decky gum pilly's,
upper-decky lip cushions. ♪ - [Alexander] Unlike cigarette brands, nicotine pouch brands are permitted to advertise
on billboards and television. And unlike E-cigarettes such as JUUL, they're sold in fruity flavors. There are lots of brands
of pouches on the market, including Rogue, VELO, and LUCY, but it's ZYN that is emerged as the Kleenex of nicotine pouches. - ZYN is sold by Swedish Match, a Swedish smokeless tobacco company. - [Alexander] In 2022, tobacco giant, Philip Morris International acquired Swedish Match
in a $16 billion deal. Just last year, Philip Morris shipped 385
million ZYN cans in the US, and this year, the company forecasts shipment volumes of
about 520 million cans. ZYN now represents 24% of
the smokeless category, which includes traditional
smokeless tobacco such as Copenhagen, Grizzly, and Skoal. - Nicotine pouches are
still in their early days in terms of their share of
the overall tobacco market. They still would have
a long, long way to go to really take a bite out of cigarettes. - [Alexander] Despite the brand's success, ZYN's unofficial brand ambassadors have created a headache for
ZYN's owner Philip Morris. - The most famous Zynfluencers
is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host. - ZYN is not a sin. - He is sort of a self-appointed and unofficial ZYN brand spokesman. - [Alexander] In October, Tucker Carlson made unfounded claims that ZYN helps with focus
and erectile dysfunction. - ZYN is a powerful work enhancer, and also a male enhancer,
if you know what I mean. - Philip Morris has pushed
back very hard on these claims, and has actually sort of asked his team to cease and desist on that. - [Alexander] Philip Morris said, "It has reached out to
social media influencers, asking them not to
promote ZYN in any form, but the audience includes
people under 21." The company said, "Its products
are intended for adults who already use nicotine. - Senator Schumer's
interest in ZYN, I think is related to his long-standing
interest in tobacco control, especially the risk to youths. However, the national
data, survey data tells us that kids are not really
using this product at significantly high levels, so there's not really evidence
for any kind of epidemic. - [Alexander] A 2023 study from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention found that around 1.5% of middle school and high school students reported using nicotine
pouches in the last 30 days. Some public health experts say, "Nicotine pouches like ZYN could save lives by helping
adult cigarette smokers switch to a much safer alternative." - Would I consider, you
know, recommending ZYN to friends or family
that smoked cigarettes? Yes, I would. We know that smoking is
bad, bad, bad for you. - Anecdotally, I've heard
from E-cigarette users who have switched over to ZYN, it's very, very hard to detect that someone has a nicotine
pouch in their mouth. I've done interviews with folks who would talk to me for half an hour, and I never noticed until
at the end of the interview, they would take the pouch out. - [Alexander] According to the FDA, "Nicotine is addictive, but by itself, it doesn't
cause cancer or lung disease." - But we don't really, you know, 100% know what the long-term effects
of nicotine use are. However, we do have some
pretty good indications from evidence that comes from
other parts of the world. So, for example, the country of Sweden is famous for using a
product called Swedish Snus. - [Alexander] Snus is a
moist, pasteurized, smokeless, oral tobacco product, which is placed under the lip to deliver nicotine through the gums. It's been used by consumers
in Sweden since the 1970s. - And this is a product that's in some ways is similar to ZYN, it's actually the precursor to ZYN, and it's known to be much less toxic compared to other oral tobacco products. - [Alexander] Since Snus pouches were first introduced in Sweden in 1973, smoking rates have fallen considerably. - Sweden now has the lowest smoking rate of all of the European Union countries. They also now have the lowest rates of smoking-related cancer. So that tells me that people
who use clean nicotine products are much less likely to
develop serious diseases that we know are related to smoking. - So Schumer asked the FDA to investigate, and the FDA already has been
conducting a review of ZYN because all nicotine pouch manufacturers were required to submit
their products for FDA review in order to get authorization to keep them on the US market. - [Alexander] If the agency
does authorize a nicotine pouch, the authorization might
come with marketing and flavor restrictions. (dramatic music)
