THE NEXT FRONTIER in local battles against nicotine doesn’t target traditional and e-cigarettes – with their wafts of tobacco smoke or flavored vapor – but the booming industry of nicotine pouches increasingly popular with younger people.
Cities and towns are hopping on the “smoke-free generation” bandwagon after the Supreme Judicial Court signed off on Brookline’s novel ban on selling tobacco products to anyone born after the turn of the century. Some municipal boards of health, like those in Greenfield and Groton, are going a step further by floating an “out of sight, out of mind” tactic, restricting certain nicotine product sales to adult-only retail tobacco stores and sparking the ire of retail associations.
These limitations would apply, notably, to oral nicotine pouches. The pre-portioned pouches contain nicotine, flavorings, fillers, and other ingredients that are not tobacco leaves, which just-approved Groton regulations note are “intended to be used between the cheek and gum to deliver nicotine, and do not require spitting as traditional smokeless tobacco does.”
Though they do not pose the respiratory risk of cigarettes or vapes, nicotine pouches have drawn similar scrutiny from those concerned that fun marketing and an array of flavor options is specifically targeting young people and starting them down a road to nicotine addiction. The Bay State already bars selling flavored nicotine products in convenience stores and gas stations for that reason, though health officials say some flavored nicotine pouches are still being sold illegally.
Cheryl Sbarra, the executive director and senior staff attorney of the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards, said her group and several other groups that advise local health boards have been recommending the change to where nicotine pouches are sold. Greenfield and Groton may end up with company – Northampton and Belchertown are both considering similar regulations.
“This is a relatively new strategy,” Sbarra said. “Boards of health hear about [these nicotine pouches] and get concerned that this is another whack-a-mole that the tobacco industry is using to get new customers. We’ve got a situation where our youth are being exposed to highly addictive oral pouches, and our field is asking [us] to assist them in coming up with a strategy to protect youth.”
Greenfield’s regulation – which went into effect June 26 – cites the US Food and Drug Administration and the US Surgeon General as stating “that flavored tobacco products are considered to be ‘starter’ products that help establish smoking habits that can lead to long-term addiction.”
Part of the strategy to eradicate tobacco-related death and disease, the regulation notes, is for local governments “to ban categories of products from retail sale.”
Nicotine pouches are a growing but complicated market. While the sales of the products are skyrocketing, a study from the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the University of Nebraska Medical Center looking at usage between 2019 and 2022 found only 2.9 percent of adults had ever tried a nicotine pouch and most still smoke cigarettes as well.
Use of e-cigarettes among Massachusetts teens is ticking down, according to Greenfield’s regulation, with 30.9 percent of high schoolers and 10.9 percent of middle schoolers now reporting e-cigarette usage.
However, a 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found nicotine pouch usage among teens to be relatively steady. Some 1.8 percent of middle and high school students said they currently use the pouches, with 29.3 percent of those students reporting frequent use and 22.4 percent reporting daily use.
The adult-only store tactic already has convenience store organizations seething. They say these policies are slipping through with little public scrutiny and dramatically retooling the business model for nicotine product sales.
Paul Brennan, executive director of the New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association, Inc., says the restrictions on nicotine are also out of step with more relaxed Bay State regulations aimed at vices like cannabis and potentially psychedelics.
“Based on what we’ve seen, these policies don’t have a lot of support once people know about them,” Brennan said. “But the tactic that the advocates have been taking is generally just to try to pass something through a board of health with very little hearing time, very little debate. And then the rules are in effect before people even really know what happened.”
Adult-only stores only allow entrance to and are staffed by those over 21 years old, with their only purpose being the sale of tobacco products and paraphernalia.
Brennan argues this sort of policy amounts to a “carve out” or “giveaway” to these shops, limiting access to nicotine pouches while the most harmful products – cigarettes – would still be easily available.
“We understand that, now, a lot of people use other products to quit smoking cigarettes,” he said. “One of the more popular products these days is a nicotine pouch or a vaporizer. But now they would like to take those options away, put them in a less convenient store, put them in another location. I don’t know why, but it’s just part of the war against nicotine.”
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