Chapters:
0:00 - Intro with Joanna Junak 0:52 - Consumer advocate John Summers discusses snus use in the UK 4:10 - Nancy Loucas from CAPHRA on difficulties surrounding new oral nicotine products in New Zealand 6:11 - Can snus compete in India? Consumer advocate Samrat Chowdhery 8:11 - Brian Erkkila from Swedish Match North America 13:26 - Closing remarksTranscription:
00:16
Hello and welcome. I'm Joanna Yunak and this is GFN News on GFN TV. In today's program, experts from the UK, US, New Zealand and India share their thoughts on the use of nicotine pounces and snooze in their countries. Snooze is now the dominant tobacco product in Sweden, where it has been used for over 200 years. Snooze has been seen as an alternative to smoking, vaping chewing and snooze tobacco products. Let's check if in other countries, smooth and nicotine pouches are also so popular. First, John Summers, consumer advocate from the UK, shows his thoughts. Snuff itself, I would say, isn't necessarily popular in the UK because it's illegal to sell it in the UK. I've used Snooze, I do use nicotine pouches. They're allowed to be sold in the UK, but Snooze itself isn't. There's an EU wide ban, and that carried over in the UK when the tobacco products directed was transposed into British law. So at the moment, you can't go into a store and purchase it. There are people, including myself, that purchased it online and it's been delivered. But technically, that sale is illegal, which is a real shame, because for some people, it's another safe nicotine product that would help them transition away from combustion. And again, that's our crux issue. That's where the carcinogens come from. That's where the stuff that's going to cause heart disease, lung disease, is coming from, is the combustion. So I really struggle to see the validity of the existing legislation within the EU. This persistent bam on a safer product when the much more dangerous product is still around, still for sale, it makes no sense at all. It's almost like saying, well, you can sell cars without seatbelt, but you can't sell the cars with seat belts. We wouldn't do that, but we're being allowed to do this. Would snooze be popular in the UK? Yeah, I think it probably would. There's an awful lot of people that don't like artificial manufactured type stuff. They want to go down the more natural route and they want to get away from smoking, or they want to not take up smoking. Indeed, everybody's different. Everybody has different likes, and I think there's definitely a place for it in the UK and in other countries, the absolute killer market for things like Snus nicotine ponchos are lower middle income countries. They would definitely benefit from the availability of safer noncombustible nicotine products. It would be a massive net benefit for the health of people's, health in those countries. But sadly, we are seeing organizations like Stop, Bloomberg, Philanthropies and others who are getting very heavily involved in lowerly income countries to try and prevent the sale or use safer nicotine products, which is absolutely crazy. We also ask Nessie Lucas from Kafra whether snow and nicotine pounders are used by people in New Zealand. They are not regulated, they are not part of the regulations. However, individuals can import them for personal use. They can, but you can't go to the store and buy it. Previously, before we had regulations, you could get nicotine powers because they're not an oral tobacco product, it's just nicotine and you could, in the unregulated market, buy them. But now that is completely gone. And the reason for that is that our regulations limit oral tobacco and also limits the introduction of new tobacco products. So that is why students was never able to actually be even introduced because the original legislation states a full ban on oral tobacco products. Pouches make it in eventually though, because it's not a tobacco product. But that's a battle for another day. Because right now. The main thing right now is when they go in and they go to change the regulations to implement these tobacco control measures. Which is just on tobacco. We have to make sure that somebody doesn't try to sneak in something to change the actual vaping part of the regulations. Because the detractors are lobbying the MPs very hard right now and they want to change the actual vaping part. Which is not part of this current campaign. So we're focusing on putting out fires. That's what we do. We put out fires and then once one fires put out, then we pick out the next fire I see down the road. They may actually end up coming, they wind up being regulated, but I don't ever see a feature for snow sear at all, which is sad, really, because it's another tool in the toolbox and like I said, could possibly work for some of these people that smoke and baby doesn't work for them. So that's kind of where we're at right now. Samab Totally, a leading consumer advocate from India, tells us what's happening in India regarding snooze and nicotine pounces. For every smoker in this country, there are two smokers tobacco users, right? So given that landscape, that's 200 million people, by the way. So given that landscape, nicotine pouches or Snooze could be a real effective solution for these people, right? Because it's the same intake, same way of ingesting nicotine. So it would just be the perfect fit. Yet I don't see enough policy initiative. I mean, I hear from my friends who have many people at the top level that they are keen to look at tobacco harm reduction in the smokeless tobacco state. But I haven't seen real action, because real action would mean that there would be differential taxation for these products, which isn't the case right now. So for these products to compete with really cheap local smokeless tobacco products is little difficult because the process involves pressurization and ensuring that the product is pollutant free, which is not how local tobacco is made. So the challenge currently is, of course it will work. I mean, nicotine pouches and Snooze and with Snooze, for example, in Swedish match sources, a lot of its tobacco from India. India is one of the largest growers of tobacco. So these are ready made solutions which people could easily transition to if they had correct information that they are less harmful and why they are less harmful, and they could be made at price points that people can afford. In fact, from Case, we had a scholarship to a program to see if snooze and egorean pouches could work for Indian smokeless tobacco users. And we are looking at two factors how effective they are and whether they can be affordable. And on both accounts they can be, but it requires a bit of government initiative. So I personally feel that degree in pouches and snows can be a game changer in India, but it requires little political will to back it up. Last but not least, Brian Erkila, director of Regulatory Science at Swedish Match North America, tells us whether snows and nicotine pouches are popular in the US market. We generally talk to you about these as like next generation nicotine pouch products. So here at Swedish Match, we sell general. Snuse is our Snooze product and Zin is our nicotine pouch product. So I would say as far as nicotine pouches in general, and in particular, zen nicotine pouches are increasing in popularity very much over the last, say, five years. But compared to use of other products, combusted, cigarettes, ecigarette, smokeless, it's still much, much lower than those. So it's very novel. I think there's a lot of discussion about them, but as far as the population wide, it's pretty small. We asked Brian if there are any groups of people who are more willing to use snooze and nicotine pouches. When you talk about snooze versus nicotine pouches, so what we've seen is that people who have moved to the Snooze products a lot of times came from traditional moist, snuff, smokeless, tobacco type products. When we get into the nicotine pouch space in the US. We're seeing that nicotine pouches are pulling from really a much broader population of traditional product users, right? So when we look at our consumers and we ask them, what products did you use before you started using vin? We see cigarette smokers, we see vapors, we see smokeless users. They're all coming from a different place. As far as their demographics, I would say a majority of our consumers for the Zen products, again, because these are the ones I have data on, tend to be a bit older, maybe in the 30 to 45 year old range. Again, they were current users of other products. And I think one of the reasons that they give a lot of different reasons for wanting to use nicotine pouches, I think many of them want to move away from a combusted product, and they see pouches as an appealing way to do that. I think some of them do it for their perceived health reasons. They like maybe the cleanliness, because it doesn't have tobacco leaf in it. They see it as a nice, clean product. And I think when you talk about maybe the vapor community, right? So they've sort of already embraced tobacco harm reduction, so I think it's sort of an easier transition for them because they understand sort of the risks of, say, a combustion cigarette and they can separate nicotine from that. And so we see a lot of interest from them as well. When it comes to youth. We here at Three Dish Match spend a lot of time thinking about how to not entice non users and youth to use the product. And so what we've seen from surveys, in particular the National Youth Tobacco Survey, the most recent results showed that current use of nicotine pouches by sort of high school under 21 is well below 1%. And we're very happy with that number. And I think that's hopefully, due to sort of our marketing, we try to be very responsible, but where we market and who we sort of try to attract with these products, which is current users, adult users of other products. Brian also shared his thoughts on the availability and price of Snooze and nicotine pouches on the US market. Our product, General Snooze, is generally sold in chillers in a lot of places, and so we have a much smaller distribution than we do for some larger products. Again, Snooze is a pretty small part of the market. Not everyone will have it, but you can usually find it in convenience stores. The nicotine pouch space is getting much larger, right? So you can find that in over 100,000 convenience stores across the United States. So someone looking for a nicotine pouch would be able to find one in a Sea store or a tobacco shop or something like that. Price wise, it generally falls somewhere along the line of our traditional smokeless products, so it'll be in line with moist, Snuff or other products. But again, there's variation within that range, right? So our users tend to be a bit older, a little more higher income, and so we believe a very premium product. So our product is a little higher price. It may also help with keeping you the way unclear there, but it's on par with moist enough a lot of places it'll be close lower than cigarettes and also lower than so as far as the tobacco arm reduction, which product which could be accessible, I think nicotine pouches that are really nice space there. That's all for today tuning. Next time here on Gsmtv or on our new podcast for more tobacco harm reduction updates. And on Thursday, Martin Calais will summarize the latest guidance from Ash UK and James Dunworth will tell us more about the disposable vape devices which have become very popular in the UK. Thanks for watching or listening. See you you next time.