Vaping in the toilet cubicle on a train is beneath me. This is a line I have drawn. First, it’s not allowed, but second – and much more importantly – the idea of savouring an intake of breath in a train toilet feels like a degradation too far. Worse still, I have always been plagued by images of a smoke detector going off and the arcane mechanism of the train toilet door somehow opening to reveal me there to my fellow passengers, wreathed in a cloud of my own shame.
I am pathetically addicted to my vape. I am not proud of this, but it is what it is. Or more accurately, it dawned on me as I walked into WH Smith at Euston station a few weeks ago, I am pathetically addicted to nicotine.
Nicotine is available in other forms. For the first time, staring down the barrel of a six-hour train journey to Edinburgh, and with my “never the toilet” rule in mind, my eye was drawn towards the selection of nicotine pouches.
You’ve probably seen these around. Hockey puck-sized plastic packets in bright colours behind the counter of supermarkets. They contain little sachets for tucking under your gum, where they funnel nicotine into your bloodstream. They have skyrocketed in popularity in recent times. The leading brand in the US, Zyn, reported a 62% increase in sales in 2023 compared with 2022. British American Tobacco UK estimates that there could be more than 2 million regular users of the pouches in the UK by 2026.
When companies like Nordic Spirit started marketing their nicotine pouches in the UK about five years ago, I noticed the adverts on the sides of buses and shook my head. There was no way those things would take off here, I thought. Primarily because they’re disgusting.
I knew them well then, but I knew them by the name of “snus”. I lived in Sweden for a while, where the consumption of these nicotine pouches (which unlike the products in Britain, contain tobacco) is a national pastime. I knew someone who, for a time, was so addicted they slept with one tucked under their lip. I was warned by Swedish friends that they usually make first-timers feel ill, and so I decided not to partake.
That decision didn’t spare me from exposure, though. When I had guests over to my flat, the next morning I would find them on my kitchen counters, these damp, brown pellets of other people’s spit emitting a smell I had never smelt before: a sort of tangy mix of rotting floorboards and unwashed mouth.
But back to WH Smith. Looking at the nicotine pouches behind the counter, I thought – why not? Why not see if these things could make my journey more palatable? And since they’re tobacco-free, there’d be no smell and, as far as I know, no major health concerns. I bought some mango-flavoured pouches, got on my train and popped one into my mouth. Fifteen minutes later I had thrown the entire packet in the bin and spent the rest of the journey gazing disconsolately at the scenery and trying not to be sick on my tray table.
Not for me, then. But it got me thinking about nicotine and addiction in general. The health-damaging ingredient in cigarettes isn’t the nicotine, it’s everything else in them. The NHS’s Quit Smoking webpage says that “although nicotine is addictive, it is relatively harmless to health”.
Now, I’m not advocating that anyone takes up nicotine pouches, or any nicotine product if you’re not already into one. But there is a moral quandary here. Is it OK that people are dependent on nicotine, if nicotine is not in and of itself bad for you? If all it does is generate the desire for more of an essentially harmless substance? And nicotine pouches especially, as a means of ingesting nicotine that never results in antisocial puffs of flavoured smoke in other people’s faces in public, as vapes sometimes do: are they fine? Is it bad for adults to have access to a mind-warpingly addictive substance that, yes, can be hard on the inside of your mouth, but otherwise has no health consequences?
Because of that “mind-warpingly addictive” element, instinctively I want to say no – it’s not fine. One should not be addicted to things. It feels like an instance of big bad capitalism that there are products on the market whose sole function is to create a want for more of the product. And reliance on anything, chemical or otherwise, is worse than total spiritual freedom.
But is a nicotine habit substantially different from a caffeine one, for instance? We’re not, most of us, wringing our hands about the legality of coffee. Am I dependent on sugar? Certainly. If people want to use these pouches, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to do them any appreciable damage.
So it is, arguably, none of my business, and – again arguably – none of the government’s either. I feel uneasy with this conclusion. The reactionary in me particularly balks at the fact that these products are not yet illegal for under-18s to buy. But it stands to reason, albeit of an uncomfortable sort.
Imogen West-Knights is a journalist and writer. Her novel Deep Down is out now
