It began when Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator, issued a call for Zyn to be regulated.
The nicotine-flavored pouches had become something of a favorite among rightwing influencers and pundits, and backers including Tucker Carlson and others have variously claimed that Zyn can increase testosterone and turn a user into an “unstoppable force”.
But as well as carrying those purported benefits – and there is particularly little evidence for the “unstoppable force” claim – Zyn pouches are becoming a danger to children, Schumer warned.
“It’s a pouch packed with problems – high levels of nicotine. So today, I’m delivering a warning to parents, because these nicotine pouches seem to lock their sights on young kids – teenagers, and even lower – and then use the social media to hook ‘em,” Schumer said.
Schumer’s warning was about the risk of young people becoming hooked on Zyn, whose manufacturer says is actually an effective tool in stopping people from smoking cigarettes, and denies that it is aimed at children.
But what was actually a fairly tepid railing against Zyn from Schumer – he has asked the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the product’s health effects and marketing – became, as things are wont to do, a rallying cry on the right, as politicians and influencer types rallied to Zyn’s defence.
Carlson is among the rightwing influencers who have joined the chorus, with conservatives apparently seeing anything that could prevent easy access to Zyn, a sort of 2020s version of chewing tobacco, as something approaching a constitutional crisis.
“This calls for a Zynsurrection!” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the reactionary far-right Republican who has previously dabbled in causes including Jewish space lasers, claimed on X. Richard Hudson, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, posted a picture of himself in camouflage holding a Zyn packet with the text: “Come and take it!”
Others made a mental leap between the effort to regulate Zyn and the situation at the border, as support for Zyn became a sort of litmus test for demonstrating one’s conservatism.
The product in question was introduced in the US in 2014, but was little known until recent years, and experienced a real boom in 2023: CNN reported that 350m tubs of Zyn were sold in 2023, an increase of 62% on the previous year.
Zyn comes in a plastic package the size and shape of a tin of shoe polish, and contains 15 pouches inside. The pouches are available in doses of 3mg or 6mg, and release nicotine into the bloodstream through the gums, with one idea being that Zyn could be used instead of cigarettes.
Still, it isn’t just rightwing blowhards who have taken a liking to Zyn.
The product has become popular among gen Z, with “zynfluencers” extolling the virtues of Zyn on TikTok and elsewhere. Critics say the pouches could be harmful to children, given that nicotine things are not supposed to be stuck into the mouth for prolonged periods of time; Time reported on a 2024 study of nicotine pouch users which found almost all had reported some kind of unpleasant side-effect – including mouth lesions, nausea and a sore throat or mouth.
Chief among the people ignoring those concerns has been Carlson, who previously received the “world’s largest Zyn container” from some people called the “Nelk Boys”, who make prank videos.
He had earlier professed his love for Zyn on the Nelk Boys’ Full Send podcast. Nicotine, Carlson said, has “added a lot to [his] life”. He said he had discovered Zyn some years ago.
“A boy that one of my daughters was dating on new year 2020 was at my house, and he pulls this out [at this point Carlson produced a Zyn container].
“I’m like: ‘What is that?’
“‘He goes: it’s the future, it’s the future. It’s a non-tobacco nicotine delivery device.”
Since then, Carlson said, everything had changed.
“It’s been a massive life-enhancer. I’d really recommend it to you,” Carlson said.
He added: “[Nicotine] increases mental acuity, raises your testosterone level, [and] it may be a prophylactic against Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”
Carlson isn’t even the most hyperbolic of Zyn’s supporters.
Greg Price, from the State Freedom Caucus Network, a rightwing organization, told Semafor: “They [liberals] fear a society when a man wakes up in the morning, drinks black coffee, pops a cool mint upper decky [puts a Zyn pouch in his mouth] and takes on the world.
“A man with nicotine, protein, caffeine and creatine coursing through his veins is an unstoppable force. Imagine if Joe Biden had a couple of smooth sixes he took every day. Maybe he’d know where to walk when he finished his speeches.”
I already take protein and creatine, and consume caffeine, so I was very excited to learn I was one step from becoming an irresistible power – on a par with the likes of Carlson and a selection of second-tier Republican members of Congress.
A tub of Cool Mint Zyn cost just $7 from a store in Manhattan, a great deal for such promised results. I eagerly tore it open and took out one of the pouches, which look disconcertingly like the little silicon packets that manufacturers bundle with new TVs and stereos.
Internet advice suggests the best place to stuff a Zyn pouch is under the top lip, where the nicotine can seep through the gums and fire up the bloodstream. According to the company, you’re supposed to shove it up there for five to 10 minutes, but can keep it in for up to half an hour. (This contradicts advice from Tucker Carlson, who said he has a pouch inside his mouth “every second [he] is awake”.)
I shoved in the Zyn pouch, and waited to become an unstoppable force.
It didn’t happen. As someone who vapes, maybe I already had too much nicotine in my system to notice the effect – maybe I have been an unstoppable force all along – but the only thing I noticed about Zyn – which is something few influencers admit – is that it’s quite horrible.
Having something shoved under your top lip is unpleasant, and whatever it is that seeps out of the Zyn pouch can burn your throat. There was no buzz, no high, no otherworldly feeling, only a sense of self-consciousness because my upper lip was bulging out.
If, as people on the right appear to have claimed, Zyn is the last bulwark of American democracy – a hill worthy of dying on in the face of the march of government bureaucracy – then it is a truly underwhelming one.
