With New Zealanders heading to the polls on 7 November, one of the Government’s early health commitments remains unfulfilled: a regulatory pathway for oral nicotine products like nicotine pouches.
When it took office, the Government committed in its coalition agreements to reform the regulation of vaping, smokeless tobacco, and oral nicotine products while banning disposable vaping products and increasing penalties for illegal sales to those under 18.
The vaping changes were introduced. Oral nicotine regulation has not occurred this term. Nicotine pouches still cannot be legally sold in New Zealand, leaving adult smokers without domestic, regulated access to a product that has transformed tobacco control elsewhere.
That gap matters because New Zealand is close to its smokefree goal. Adult daily smoking has fallen to 6.8%, according to the Ministry of Health’s New Zealand Health Survey, down from around 15% less than a decade ago, largely due to vaping.
Research published this year in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific found the annual decline in adult daily smoking accelerated fivefold, from 3.5% before 2018 to 17.9% between 2018 and 2023. But the same study found progress has now plateaued just under 7%, with smoking increasingly concentrated among Māori, older, and more socioeconomically disadvantaged New Zealanders.
Around 300,000 New Zealand adults continue to smoke. Many have tried vaping but did not continue. For them, another option may make the difference.
Sweden shows what that option can achieve. Daily smoking there fell to a record low of 3.7% in 2026, making it the first country to drop below the internationally recognized 5% smoke-free threshold. Nicotine pouches have been a game-changer in that success, especially among women, many of whom never used snus or vaping.
International science backs the case. In We Are Innovation’s position paper The Global Case for Nicotine Pouches, Dr Karl Fagerström, inventor of the Fagerström Test for Cigarette Dependence and a recipient of the World Health Organization medal, sets out the evidence on relative risk. In a risk-scoring study he cites, cigarettes were rated 100, and nicotine pouches 0.1. A Swedish study found 84 potentially toxic substances in cigarettes and just five in nicotine pouches.
“The nicotine pouches are very similar in composition to nicotine replacement products, and the exposure to possible toxins is similar,” Dr Fagerström writes. “In comparison to heated tobacco products and vapes, nicotine pouches are likely the safest of these harm reduction products.”
Regulators elsewhere are moving. In January 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration authorized the marketing of 20 ZYN nicotine pouch products after concluding they met the public health standard required for authorization.
Federico N. Fernández, CEO of We Are Innovation, a global network of 59 think tanks and civil society organisations in more than 30 countries, said New Zealand had already proved that innovation works.
“New Zealand did what very few countries have had the courage to do. It trusted adult smokers with a safer alternative, and the results are there for everyone to see,” he said, “But the last few percentage points are always the hardest. Vaping is not for everyone, and the 300,000 Kiwis who still smoke deserve more ways out, not fewer. Nothing about this means going soft on young people. New Zealand already has the template from vaping: adult-only sales, proper age verification, sensible limits on nicotine strength and no marketing aimed at kids. Apply the same approach to pouches and you protect young people while giving smokers a legal, safer choice. Nicotine pouches could be the missing piece that gets New Zealand to the finish line, just as they helped Sweden get there first.”
New Zealand’s success in reducing smoking shows what can happen when smokers are given access to safer alternatives. Vaping has played a major role in that progress, but it will not work for everyone. Regulating nicotine pouches would build on what New Zealand has already achieved, widen the range of lower-risk options available to adult smokers, and help push smoking rates down even further.