There’s an invasive species slowly displacing vapes and cigarettes at UK universities. Half-chewed, gum-shaped pouches filled with nicotine and flavouring have sprung up on pavements and library bins across Cambridge, à la British American Tobacco.

Modern snus consumption was popularised in Sweden, where the original tobacco version is still legal and widely used. In the rest of the EU and the UK, only nicotine pouches without tobacco (and the toxins associated with it) are allowed to be sold and bought.

Whilst still fairly niche, during Easter term library sessions I started to notice people stuffing these pouches under their upper lips, and then at May Week events and club nights.

“These conglomerates are raising a new generation of nicotine addicts”

Heavy marketing by companies like Nordic Spirit, Velo, and Zyn on social media over the past three years have promoted snus as the new trendy smokeless alternative to cigarettes: discreet, better for the lungs, and (crucially) able to fill the social role that other alternatives fail to satisfy.

In the US, for example, an entire subculture of young professionals emerged out of Swedish Match’s Zyn. Here in the UK, the brand Nordic Spirit, owned by Japan Tobacco International, sponsored music festivals like Latitude and On the Beach to shell out free samples – mirroring the guerilla marketing of vaping brands like Juul.

Ed, a Cambridge student who first came across the product at a festival in 2023 whilst sheltering from the rain under a Nordic Spirit tent, was given these free sample packs on the spot: “I left set for weeks.”

Intensely targeted at a generation raised on anti-smoking campaigns and awareness about the detrimental effects of tobacco, these conglomerates are raising a new generation of nicotine addicts. They had some success buying out vape companies, but a gap in the market remained for a stylish smokeless alternative – increasingly significant in the wake of the UK’s recent disposable vape ban.

“Targeted advertising has pushed it into the hands of young people who were never addicted in the first place”

Although aimed at existing cigarette-smokers looking to wean off onto something less toxic as a ‘harm reduction’ product, targeted advertising has pushed it into the hands of young people who were never addicted in the first place. The users I spoke to had largely only engaged in casual, infrequent social smoking – nowhere near consuming the amount of nicotine that they do with snus.

Dan, another Cambridge student, for example, vomited the first time he tried it due to nicotine overdose, but a year later can provide one simple quote for the article: “snus is great”.

Alternatives like nicotine pouches and gum are primarily marketed as clinical ways to alleviate physical nicotine dependency, unable to fulfil the social function that cigarettes performed, especially for students. It also doesn’t give the instantaneous ‘nic rush’ feeling, failing to attract users like Ed who “very quickly became hooked on the head rush”.

This immediate boost of energy coupled with the pouch’s discretion also makes it attractive as a study aid: “I definitely correlated the act of putting a snus in with productivity.” Users described popping one in “before supervisions, while reading, or writing essays.” However, for them it wasn’t clear if the nicotine was actually boosting concentration, or a dependency on the product was simply “bringing me up to a ‘baseline’ comparable to other people’s levels of focus.”

Perhaps the closest oral alternative before the ‘Zyndemic’ was chewing tobacco, or ‘dip’ – the twice-removed great uncle of the nicotine product world. This, however, was never a competitor for trendy university usage. Hostile to a product with all the toxins of tobacco cigarettes and all the style and elegance of a sex tourist, the market was ready for a new, recreational nicotine product.

“Quitting can be, as Ed comments three weeks into quitting, ‘routinely shit’”

An improvement on vapes, it’s smokeless, and therefore spares the unsuspecting bystander walking behind you from your strawberry ice plume backwash. The smokeless aspect might also be why snus is used by one in five professional footballers. Helpfully, Velo’s website even offers an article advising users on ‘how to use nicotine pouches at work’.

Regardless, no nicotine is always a safer option, not to mention a far cheaper one. Nicotine, a toxin, in general has been shown time and time again to have negative physical and mental health effects. It’s highly addictive, and whilst you’re only young once, tobacco companies can have you hooked for a lifetime. Quitting can be, as Ed comments three weeks into quitting for the third time, “routinely shit”.

“It’s hard to ignore the benefits for those wanting to give up cigarettes to curb cravings as well as maintain the sociability they lost from smoking areas, to the that offered by the emerging subculture amongst young people”

He describes feeling the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, making him “irritable and argumentative” and “incredibly out of it” for the first few days. Aside from physical symptoms, the longer-lasting “mental cravings are hard to shake,” particularly under times of stress.

Many also talk of the unpleasant burning sensation in their gums whilst using. Aside from a minor inconvenience, habitual use may lead to the more concerning oral health risk of gum recession.

Having said this, it’s hard to ignore the benefits for those wanting to give up cigarettes to curb cravings as well as maintain the sociability they lost from smoking areas, to that offered by the emerging subculture amongst young people. Sweden, the centre of snus’ popularity, has a notoriously low smoking rate compared to its other European peers.

Whether or not you decide to wean off smoking (NHS guide here), or your moral position on smoking alternatives, giant tobacco companies have shown once again the predatory lengths they’ll go to in order to avoid losing customers.

Names have been changed to protect privacy.