Fake News: American Lung Association Implies that Zyn Nicotine Pouches Contain Tobacco and Can Cause Cancer

The American Lung Association has issued a statement in response to the FDA's authorization of Zyn nicotine pouches in which it blasts the FDA for approving this product and asserts that it is a "gift to Big Tobacco." The statement also implies that Zyn contains tobacco and can cause cancer.

The American Lung Association stated as follows:

"Let’s be clear: Zyn is a tobacco product, and no tobacco product is safe. A 2022 study of 44 nicotine pouch products found that 26 of the samples contained cancer-causing chemicals and several other chemicals such as: ammonia, chromium, formaldehyde, nickel, pH adjusters and nicotine salt. ... It is now up to state and local governments to act to end the sale of flavored tobacco products if we are to end the tobacco use epidemic, once and for all."

The statement concludes with a link to a previous statement which, as I discussed earlier, falsely claims that using Zyn is no safer than cigarette smoking. 

The Rest of the Story

In this statement, the American Lung Association has doubled down on its suggestion that Zyn is unsafe because it contains carcinogens. This assertion relies upon a 2022 study which the ALA notes that "26 of the samples contained cancer-causing chemicals." It is referring to the detection of tobacco-specific nitrosamines (which are carcinogens) in 26 of the 44 products studied.

There are two serious problems with the ALA's assertion:

1. The American Lung Association is hiding from the public the levels of nitrosamines that were detected in nicotine pouches. It turns out that the study detected only trace levels and that these levels are substantially lower than those present in nicotine gum!

2. The American Lung Association is also hiding from the public the fact that Zyn has indeed been tested for tobacco-specific nitrosamines and none were detected. The FDA concluded that: "The new products do not contain measurable quantities of carcinogenic TSNAs, including NNN and NNK, or the carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon B[a]P."

The ALA's implying that Zyn contains tobacco-specific nitrosamines because of a study that tested other nicotine pouch brands is irrresponsible because it would have taken only one click for them to read the FDA's report and find out that no tobacco-specific nitrosamines were detectable in any of the Zyn products that were authorized. This is guilt by association. The 2022 study actually has no relevance to the evaluation of Zyn's safety, especially when one can easily read the FDA's report and find out that Zyn is probably the safest nicotine product on the market in terms of carcinogen levels (even safer than nicotine gum in this regard). 

The American Lung Association's assertion that Zyn should be banned if we want to end the "tobacco use epidemic" implies that the use of Zyn is tobacco use. Nothing could be further from the truth because Zyn contains no tobacco! Someone who uses Zyn is not using tobacco. 

In fact, apparently unbeknownst to the ALA, the entire point of using Zyn is that it doesn't contain tobacco. And as the FDA reports: "The applicant also provided evidence from a study showing that a substantial proportion of adults who use cigarette and/or smokeless tobacco products completely switched to the newly authorized nicotine pouch products."

The rest of the story is that the truth is apparently not good enough for the American Lung Association to make a convincing argument that Zyn poses great dangers to the public's health. They can only scare the public into believing this by lying to them: implying that Zyn contains tobacco and that it contains carcinogens, neither of which is true. When an organization has to resort to making false or misleading statements to support its position, that is a sign that the actual truth is not sufficient to to do so.

Rather than being a "gift to Big Tobacco," the authorization of Zyn products could be the beginning of a death knell for actual tobacco products in the United States. Traditional Big Tobacco (cigarettes and smokeless tobacco) are greatly threatened by the authorization of electronic cigarettes and products like Zyn. This is not a gift to Big Tobacco. It is a gift to public health. It is a gift to smokers and smokeless tobacco users who want to improve their health by switching to a safer nicotine product. And it is a gift to anyone who wants to see the end of tobacco-related morbidity and mortality in this country.