The $7 Billion Nicotine-Pouch Market’s Next Target? Women

Originally published in Bloomberg Businessweek on June 12, 2025 as “The $7 Billion Nicotine-Pouch Market’s Next Target? Women”

In Sweden, female users are adopting the tobacco-free products faster than their male counterparts — and companies have taken notice.

At Odenplan Square in central Stockholm, high school students move in packs, enjoying a day off and the early spring weather. Even though graduation is still weeks away, some seniors are already sporting their celebratory caps, per Swedish tradition. One of them is 19-year-old Olivia Persson, who, in addition to wearing the sailor-style hat, carries a bright tin of nicotine pouches. So do most of the other girls in her crew, each in turn showing off colorful containers with peach and apple-mint flavors tucked into pockets and purses.

“It’s just fun,” Persson says of the Chiclet-size packets, or tobacco-free snus, that users tuck between their gums and lips for a quick hit of nicotine. “You feel more alert, and everyone does it, so it’s easy to think, ‘How bad can it be?’ ”

Nicotine pouches—think Zyn, Velo or countless others—have surged in popularity around the world, with men behind much of the boom in major markets such as the US. But in Sweden, the first country to officially go “smoke free” (meaning less than 5% of adults smoke anymore), in November, it’s young women’s uptake that has companies taking notice. Female consumers are more quickly becoming daily users of the nicotine-packed variety, with about 15% of women age 16-29 reporting using the tobacco-free pouches every day in 2024, according to the country’s public-health agency. That’s almost 5 percentage points higher than men in that age range and a 57% increase from just two years ago.

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Illustration by Ohni Lisle.