How is it a tiny little pouch caused waves of controversy across the country?

Children are being harmed, a monopoly within a monopoly was established, alongside a booming black market, while honest businesses and yet another entire industry get taxed and regulated out of existence, and Canadians are left off less healthy with less freedom.

These pouches contain nicotine; users tuck them in their upper lip, and remove them once the stimulant has been absorbed, usually after over half an hour.

Though health risks are not yet fully understood, many smokers speculate it is still better than cigarettes, thus it is often used as an alternative, like vaping. Nicotine, found within products discussed in this report, is an addictive substance, and should not be consumed by youth.

In 2007, and with great foresight, Imperial Tobacco was planning to enter a snus-like, but tobacco free, nicotine pouch into Canada.

This was part of a “larger strategy to become better corporate citizens,” an approach desired by many global organizations like the United Nations. This is a Corporate Social Responsibility concept, heavily corelated with social credit score projects such as Environmental Social Governance, both globalist themed adherence structures targeting actions of individuals.

Since then, the tobacco industry has also been drastically increasing the price of their addictive cigarettes continuously, while investing in smokeless nicotine consumables for their customers.

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Around 2020, through a wave of imports and digitally accessible markets, all in time for us being proverbially locked inside for COVID, pouch use began.

Consumer-friendly flavours, branding, and varying nicotine levels would soon become abundant. The global market was being openly tapped, and most products would already even be labelled as addictive and not for youth consumption.

They were also heavily sought by smokers as a means to quit nicotine or switch away from cigarettes. Pouches were being used increasingly but not regulated, authorized, or illegal to sell to anyone of any age.

Instead of prohibiting sales to those under 18 like other nicotine products, in November 2020 the federal Liberal government responded by putting out a little memo. 

This informed the public that these unregulated nicotine buccal pouches exist and may pose health risks because Health Canada had not assessed them yet.

They said pouches were classified as drugs under the Food and Drugs Act. Those with over 4mg of nicotine could be prescription based, and 4mg or less could be natural health products, pending authorization. They warn sales aren't legal, and compliance efforts are being made to enforce such. 

What they left out was that despite knowing children could purchase these new nicotine products, they chose not to immediately implement age restrictions. Sales were still not made explicitly illegal, thus the grey market continued, and kids could still purchase it.

Imperial Tobbacco, having applied around 2021 then announces in October 2023 legal approval was granted to sell their 4mg Zonnic pouches in Canada. 

Authorized by Health Canada, who was then warning against other pouches at the time. This pouch was to be considered a Natural Health Product, to be used as a Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT). Zonnic was then the only officially legal to sell pouch on the open market, all others remained unauthorized drugs.

Groups like the Canadian Cancer Society, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and other partners began gathering public attention. They highlighted how existing laws did not adequately restrict pouches or protect youth.

They called for action by former minister of health Mark Holland, and former minister of mental health and addictions and associate minister of health, Ya'ara Saks. Admitting they had no proper knowledge of the health effects of pouches these groups demanded, to stop youth appeal, restricting sales locations, designs, flavours, and nicotine volumes, atop banning youth sales.

Former health minister Holland, who previously worked for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, theatrically accused Big Tobacco of abusing a loophole to sell their pouches to children. Pouches being a new product with nicotine but not tobacco fell outside the domain of relevant legislation at the time. 

Instead of using his ministerial powers to immediately implement age restrictions, Holland asked for more ministerial powers and blamed globally-standard marketing practices like package colours and pouch flavours as the cause for rising youth consumption.

By 2024, nicotine pouches were still not illegal to sell to children. Instead, now with Zonnic being the only authorized pouch, Health Canada began working with other federal agencies to crack down on all other unauthorized pouches.

Then, in August 2024, Holland finally did something with his health minister power and implemented the Supplementary Rules Respecting Nicotine Replacement Therapies Order.

This demanded pouch branding labels be added to the NRT application, retail sales must adhere to approved products and doses, branding considered appealing to youth be prohibited, and mint would be the only allowed flavour.

Most notably, this order prohibited “direct public access to dosage forms of NRTs that have a limited history of appropriate use in Canada, which are not on the List, by requiring that they be sold by a pharmacist or someone under their supervision and are otherwise inaccessible for self-selection.”

The government did not make nicotine pouches illegal to sell to minors; instead, they simply told producers to label their product as +18 and told pharmacists to use their discretion when selling this over-the-counter product.

It’s worth noting, that despite other nicotine replacement therapies, such as gums of varying flavours being sold over the counter for decades, only these pouches are vilified so blatantly by our federal government.

Holland threw a literal temper tantrum at Big Tobacco for making one tobaccoless product — that Health Canada approved. Big Pharma however, being behind most previous nicotine replacement therapies and many more addictive and dangerous drugs like prescription opioids, don't face scrutiny while harming countless Canadians.

Four years after identifying concerns related to youth access to nicotine pouches, and a ministerial order later, Health Canada, though having made it more difficult to purchase for youth and everyone else, had still not made it illegal for children to purchase nicotine pouches.

As a result of this order, only pharmacies can sell nicotine pouches currently, 4mg or less, in only one flavour, from only one brand. They effectively handed Imperial Tobacco a monopoly over the entire pouch market and gave pharmacies a monopoly on sales, as their way of supposedly preventing youth access.

We spoke with Eric Gagnon, vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs at Imperial Tobacco Canada, to get his reaction to the situation.