The Zyn-ification of everything

When Eric Drymer’s last startup failed in 2024, he realized the stress of “grind type shit” to keep the company afloat had led him to pick up some bad habits — namely, vaping. He largely credits hypnosis with helping him quit, but a complementary solution — nicotine pouches that eased his cravings — also gave him his next business idea.

He was fascinated by the “form factor” of the pouches, he says, and it seemed like suddenly everyone around him was using them. The managing director at a friend’s hedge fund had bought 1,000 cans of Zyn for the office. “It’s like a productivity tool, right?” he says, albeit one with significant downsides. Nicotine is highly addictive, and it’s harmful to cardiovascular health. So, Drymer started to think, why not look beyond nicotine?

“I just kind of got obsessed with this idea of, what if I could do something that’s not addictive, that’s actually healthy for you, but that’s actually better as a focus tool?” Drymer, who lives in New York, says.

With that, Ultra Pouches was born. If you’ve never seen them, most pouches look the same — they’re little white sachets filled with powder people generally stick in their lip, next to their gums. Ultra Pouches are designed for two uses — one for sleep, one for focus — and come in flavors such as cool mint, watermelon, and tropical. They don’t have nicotine or tobacco but instead say they’re packed with ingredients such as vitamins B12 and B6, ginseng extract, and paraxanthine, a metabolite of caffeine. Since they’re classified as supplements, they don’t need FDA approval for safety or effectiveness. Some of Ultra’s marketing claims its pouches are as if nicotine and adderall “had a baby.”

We’re in the era of pouch palooza. A growing number of entrepreneurs have taken a look at the growing popularity of Zyn — the nicotine pouches owned by Philip Morris International — and tried to get in on the action. Some have launched what are essentially Zyn copycats, while others are stuffing pouches with caffeine, CBD, THC, melatonin, and even teeth-whitening ingredients.

The pouch has quietly become one of the hottest new delivery systems in consumer products. What began as a nicotine trend has turned into a broader race to package energy, relaxation, wellness, and performance into the same small sack. Companies are betting consumers haven’t just fallen in love with the buzz, but with the pouch itself.

Part of the pouch’s appeal is practical. Unlike cigarettes or vaping, they don’t produce smoke or vapor, and they don’t have much of a smell. They can be used discreetly almost anywhere — the office, the gym, the bar. They’re shareable. They’ve got a cleaner, more modern aesthetic than traditional smokeless tobacco. They’ve got a cool factor to them — especially among young men.

A plethora of memes and so-called “Zynfluencers” on Instagram and TikTok have turned pouches into a cultural phenomenon. Phillip Morris shipped 880 million cans of nicotine pouches in 2025, a 37% increase from the year before. The prevalence of the product remains relatively low — 5.9% of US adults reported using them in 2024 — but it’s one of the tobacco industry’s only growing segments. People who use them tend to use them a lot, and most are current or former smokers, vapers, or users of other types of tobacco products.

They’ve got a cool factor to them — especially among young men.

“There is a lot of social media promotion that I think drives use in smaller social networks,” says Dr. Pamela Ling, director of the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. She points to news stories about Palantir and other tech companies stocking Zyn in their refrigerators, as well as online jokes about Zyn preventing workplace violence. “Something that is funny can be spread pretty widely, pretty quickly, and I do think it has this kind of normalizing effect.”

Makers of nicotine pouches have positioned them as a healthier alternative to smoking or vaping. The FDA recently cleared Zyn to market its product as such. But that’s not the only thing drawing consumers in.

“They use it for stimulation, for fun, to relieve stress,” says Pallav Pokhrel, a professor and program co-leader at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, adding that the different flavors help the pouch appeal.

Scientists and regulators are still playing catch-up. The FDA has only authorized a handful of nicotine pouches, meaning many alternatives out there are still under review. While many doctors and researchers say they’re likely better than smoking, they’re not good for your overall health or your mouth. Richard Holliday, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University’s School of Dental Sciences who is researching the effects of nicotine pouches on oral health, tells me pouches are “potentially quite an insult to the lining of the mouth,” especially when people keep them in for 12-18 hours a day. “If you hold anything against that tissue, it’s not going to be particularly happy,” he says.

Concerns about the downsides of pouches haven’t deterred companies and entrepreneurs from jumping in.

Lorenzo De Plano, the CEO of ALP Pouch, the Zyn alternative launched by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in 2024, has spent over a decade in the nicotine space. He says businesses are constantly looking for “more efficient nicotine delivery systems.” The answer could have been gum, but the pharmaceutical bent of it isn’t quite right. “Is that something you’re excited to use in the morning?” he says. Plus, nicotine gum can be tough on the stomach.

ALP sells nearly a dozen flavors of nicotine pouches in varying strengths. It also has a line of caffeine pouches and has entered into partnerships with multiple athletes and manosphere types, including mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor and golfer Carter Smith, as well as, of course, Carlson. De Plano isn’t squeamish about the product’s potential hazards.

“Look, at the end of the day, we’re very pro-choice,” he says. “We openly state that our products are addictive.”

Other entrepreneurs in this mini startup boom run the gamut, whether they’re running directly at Zyn or trying to catch a sidecar.

Jason Vedadi spent most of his career in cannabis before someone brought a nicotine pouch opportunity. The product, called Joey (yes, like the baby kangaroos who go in pouches), is “a passion project on top of an opportunity,” Vedadi says. Joey comes in 36 different flavors, and each pouch is filled with little polymer beads the company calls “flavorbeads,” which may help its taste last longer. “We wouldn’t have gotten into the space if we had another white powder pouch,” he says.

Howard Panes, who prefers to go by Howie P, says it was a lifetime spent in and out of the dental chair that inspired him to launch Smile+, oral health pouches designed to help whiten people’s teeth. “I was doing research and talking to guys who were my dentists and endodontists, guys who I’ve developed relationships with over the last three decades, and basically with conversations with them, using AI, talking to some scientists, I realized that the pouch could be the greatest delivery system,” he says. “You’re going to see, the next big wave is going to be for pouches.”

Companies piggybacking off the success of pouches is a pretty common occurrence when a product becomes popular, says Tory Spindle, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. But those going the non-nicotine direction have an advantage: They don’t have to worry too much about the FDA. “If you have a caffeine pouch, then you don’t have the same regulatory oversight,” he says.

People are willing to pay to be guinea pigs with this stuff.

Supplements are regulated as a category of food in the US, not as a drug. Manufacturers are responsible for making sure their products are safe and accurately labeled — the FDA doesn’t test them to determine whether they’re harmful or if they even do what they say they do. So the supplements industry is a bit of a Wild West in terms of the claims companies can make and the types of substances they can push. Entrepreneurs can experiment with a fashionable delivery format while making wellness claims that often haven’t been rigorously tested.

Something similar has happened with vapes — you can find pens that claim to deliver vitamin B12, melatonin, or vitamin C, though the science there is dubious. “There’s absolutely no evidence that you can effectively deliver vitamin B12 by heating it up and inhaling it into your blood,” Dr. Ling says. “People are willing to pay to be guinea pigs with this stuff.”

Jessica Barrington-Trimis, an associate professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California, is digging into various substance-delivery methods, including pouches. She says she’s “shocked” by how many brands have popped up. “Especially between nicotine and cannabis in the pouch market, it’s just continuing to increase,” she says.

The scientific theory behind pouches is that they’re a way to deliver a drug without having to ingest it into the stomach, where it could be degraded. It’s why you take some drugs under your tongue.

Pouches can work with drugs for which people are seeking very low doses, which is the case with nicotine, says Hassan Almoazen, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Pharmacy. For things that would require a higher amount to take effect, it’s a different story. “I don’t think this route will work for vitamins because for most vitamins, you need large doses,” he says. “It’s a very limited route.”

Pouches aren’t hyper ubiquitous yet. At the moment, nicotine pouches appear to be more popular with a slightly older crowd — 20-somethings rather than teens — and in certain sectors, such as finance and tech. They’re much more common with men, who use them not only to feed their nicotine habits but also to better focus, improve workouts, and to lose weight.

It could only be a matter of time before they really explode. Pouch proponents point to Sweden, where nicotine pouches have been common for years. Women are now heavier users there than men, and smoking rates have plummeted. They say the US could follow the same trajectory.

It’s also a familiar pattern in consumer products, such as powders, shots, and seltzers: One product gets consumers into the format, and others hop on the bandwagon to see what else they can do with it. Gummies escaped the candy aisle to become a catchall for anything from vitamin D to melatonin to CBD. Pouches could be going that direction — there are reports of teachers expressing concern over caffeine pouches in schools.

If you haven’t picked up on the proliferation of pouches just yet, you might recognize it now. Maybe it’s a little lump under a coworker’s cheek. Or all those white plastic pucks behind the convenience store counter. Lots of enterprising individuals figure if people will use the pouch for nicotine, why not for everything else?

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.