Don Juan, the 1655 five-act comedy by Molière, begins with a rhapsody on the benefits of snuff: the pulverized tobacco product popularized in the courts and salons of 17th-century Europe. “It’s the passion of the virtuous man,” Molière’s rakish hero waxes. “Not only does it purge the human brain, but it also instructs the soul in virtue and one learns from it how to be a virtuous man.”
Don Juan’s ode to smokeless tobacco was consistent with similar ecstasies of the era. The distinguished English scholar and encyclopedist Robert Burton claimed tobacco went “far beyond all other panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases”. Mark Twain, the eminent American wit, once proclaimed: “If smoking is not allowed in heaven, I shall not go.”
While tobacco smoking has itself fallen out of the cultural fashion – a 2021 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 11.5% of Americans over the age of 18 smoked cigarettes, compared with 20.9% in 2005 – the plant’s active stimulant, nicotine, is enjoying a fresh vogue in a new form. And its enthusiasts are no less delicious in their raves, phrased in the hyper-enthusiastic parlance of our times: “I do have a Benja-Zyn … I gotta couple fuckin’ Tempur-Pedic lip cushies, buddy … couple couch cushions for your upper deck, buddy.”
To anyone unschooled in the fratty, bro-y, vocal jazz of modern nicotine fandom, Zyn is basically a modern-day snuff, albeit sucked rather than snorted. It’s a brand of smokeless nicotine pouches produced by a Stockholm-based tobacco manufacturer, which was sold to the American multinational Philip Morris International (PMI) for $16bn in 2022. Zyn is sold in circular tins, containing 15-20 pouches, each of which contains anywhere from 1.5mg to 9mg of nicotine. (By comparison, the average cigarette contains anywhere between 8mg and 20mg of nicotine, of which only 1-2mgs is actually absorbed through smoking.) “Lip cushies” and “couch cushions”, meanwhile, are slang for the pouches themselves, which, with their rectangular profile, vaguely resemble cushions, or pillows.
“There’s all kinds of slang for it,” says David Dobbs, a 21-year-old student living in California. “There’s videos on social media where people have fridges full of Zyn. And there’s different terminology, like you can use an upper-decker or a lower-decker,” depending where the pouch is placed in the mouth.
For David, using Zyn (or “Zynning”) is not an especially social ritual. He regards it as a smoking cessation aid. Barely in his 20s, he already considers himself an addict. He started smoking, and using nicotine vape products, when he was 16, and has since moved on nicotine lozenges, nicotine gum and, currently, Zyn. “Nicotine is definitely my drug of choice,” he admits. “I will find any reason – any reason [to use it]. My brain is hyper-fixated. It is the thing.”
This new class of tobacco-less nicotine pouches has some advantages over its predecessors. For one, Zyn and similar products do not require users to spit. This distinguishes them from other forms of smokeless tobacco, which, in polite company, necessitate the use of some sort of spittoon – often an empty soda bottle or beer can. (Smokeless tobacco products are sometimes called “spit tobacco” for this reason.) Not needing to spit makes this product much more discreet – and, it follows, less revulsive to those who may find spitting, or seeing people spit, just plain gross. For his part, David cites a range of reasons for preferring Zyn, from the relatively low price to the range of flavors. “If I start talking about Zyns,” he laughs, “I sound like I’m a rep for them.”
David’s hope that nicotine pouches can keep him off cigarettes is a view shared by PMI, which regards these products as part of its stated corporate vision to “deliver a smoke-free future”. (PMI was spun off from Philip Morris USA and its parent company, Altria Group, in 2008, in an apparent effort to focus on emerging international markets.) “The objective is for us to replace cigarettes with products like Zyn,” says Corey Henry, a PMI spokesperson. “The whole point of the product is for adults who want to switch away, particularly from traditional tobacco products.”
Henry categorically denies that the company is actively engaged in funding any social media activity, or underwriting social media users (who self-identify, naturally, as Zynfluencers) who enthusiastically promote the product. “We don’t have any kind of promotional relations or contracts with anyone doing this online,” he says. “We do get requests for partnership. We deny every single one of them.”
Indeed – beyond the potentially curious optics of underwriting the nicotine use, and abuse, of influencers whose relationship to the product straddles lines between the dis-regulated, ironized, and straight-up baffling, it doesn’t really seem like Zyn needs to buy publicity.
While there are other brands of nicotine pouches – including On! (owned byAltria), Rogue (whose parent company is the Florida-headquartered Swisher) and Lucy (produced by the LA-based Lucy Goods) – Zyn is far and away the industry leader in category, commanding 67.3% of the market, according to a 2023 report. As proof its its ubiquity, “Zyn”, “Zyns” and “Zynnies” have become synonymous with the category, much as “Coke” has become shorthand for “soda” or “Kleenex” for “facial tissue”. Perhaps the fact that the monosyllabic word easily lends itself to puns like “Zyn-babwe,” “Zyn-aloa Cartel” and “Zyn-dney Crosby” has lended further succor to the brand’s saturation.
On TikTok, videos promoting – or merely depicting – Zyn use rack up massive engagement. A recent video of a woman preparing her boyfriend a “Zyn birthday cake”, which is really just a tray of stacked Zyn tins, earned responses like: “Maybe it’s slightly enabling but it’s hilarious …” A December 2023 clip of the hirsute comedian Bert Kreischer trying Zyn has been viewed by nearly a million users. “Everyone who does Zyns seems like there [sic] either a salesman or shareholder in Zyn with the enthusiam [sic] they bring to try to get me to take one,” one commenter replied.
Yet this popularity – and the culture that has, spontaneously, emerged around it – has raised some eyebrows. Recently, Chuck Schumer, the US Senate majority leader, called for federal crackdown on Zyn, specifically, referring to the product as “a pouch packed with problems”. He also claimed the company “seem to lock their sights on young kids – teenagers, and even lower”.
Predictably, this led to a flamed-up culture war incident, which saw the controversial Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene calling for a “Zynsurrection”. Conservative media quickly followed the trail. The commentator Michael Knowles, who once called the climate activist Greta Thunberg “mentally ill” on Fox News and who has said that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely”, released a video stumping for Zyn. (Knowles is also the founder of a cigar company, Mayflower Cigars, and boasts on the company’s official website about smoking cigars as an underage boy, claiming that “cigars are among the few things I’ve loved longer than my wife, whom I first kissed at 16”.) The rightwing pundit Tucker Carlson is also a noted Zyn-thusiast who claimed nicotine can “free your mind”.
Bob, an underage Zyn user who did not want to use his real name, said that he would not personally be opposed to government restrictions. “Even though I am a user,” he explains via email, “I wouldn’t be opposed to a short ban until studies about safety can be conducted more thoroughly, but I doubt that will happen. I do think the government should prioritize safer forms of intake and market them as such, though.”
PMI’s spokespeople explicitly deny that Zyn, or any of their other nicotine products, are targeted to underage users. They maintain that the drugs are legally restricted to users aged 21-plus. But anyone who has attempted to procure nicotine or tobacco products while underage knows that, say, gas station or convenience store attendants working minimum wage are not necessarily superinvested in enforcing that law to the letter.
Ben (also note his real name), a 19-year-old Zyn user who lives in Missouri, admits that he only heard about the pouches a few months ago, thanks in part to media attention, social and otherwise. “The smoke shop by me does not card for people who look college-age,” he says. “With the Chuck Schumer thing – I don’t think these companies have to market to teens and underage people. Word of mouth is usually enough, especially for something that is addictive, and also has a lot of brand loyalty, which also comes with any other tobacco product.”
If there’s one thing Ben doesn’t seem to buy into, it’s the supposed physiological and neurological virtues of the drug, which have preoccupied users for as long as nicotine has circulated, from the commercial crops of 17th-century Virginia to the Parisian salons of the belle époque, to current-day online conservative media commentary.
“People do like to talk about the cognitive benefits of nicotine,” he says. “I think the fact that it’s so addictive kind of outweighs that. I’m not using it because I’m super-smart, or need to focus on classes. I’m using it because I’m addicted to nicotine.”
