Spain’s plan to fix pouches: make them as bad as gum

“As much nicotine as the chewing gum”

Spain’s Secretary of State for Health, Javier Padilla, has a plan for nicotine pouches. In an interview with POLITICO’s Morning Health Care, he said that if pouches are supposed to help people quit smoking, they should contain no more nicotine than nicotine gum. That means roughly 2 to 4 mg per pouch.

It sounds sensible. Gum is a medicine, pouches should be like gum, “job done”.

There’s just one problem. Nicotine gum has been on pharmacy shelves for more than 40 years. If it were the answer, Spain wouldn’t still have millions of smokers.

Spain’s latest draft decree reportedly caps pouches at 4 mg of nicotine. According to reported figures, products at or below that level make up only a small share of what adults here buy today. Padilla’s comments suggest even that might be too generous. By his gum logic, anything between 2 and 4 mg is fair game, which means the limit could end up at half of what’s on the table today.

The dose is the point

A smoker doesn’t switch because a product is approved. They switch because it actually replaces the cigarette. If it doesn’t, they go back to smoking.

Gum was designed as a short-term medicine, taken for a few months and then stopped. It releases its nicotine slowly, and only part of it gets absorbed. For a lot of heavy smokers, that’s simply not enough to stop the cravings.

Pouches work for many adults precisely because they come in different strengths. People start where they need to be and step down over time if they want to. Cap them at gum level and you remove the thing that makes them work.

Gum doesn’t deliver

In a head-to-head study, smokers using 4 mg nicotine gum got only about a third of the nicotine out of it. A 4 mg pouch, same strength, put roughly twice as much nicotine into their blood.

That matters. A smoker who doesn’t get enough nicotine keeps craving a cigarette, and sooner or later they light one.

And pouches don’t stop at 4 mg. Gum gives you one weak dose and a sore jaw. That’s the benchmark Padilla wants pouches to match.

He already knows where this leads

This is the frustrating part. In the same interview, Padilla said he doesn’t support banning products, because bans feed the black market. He’s right.

But a cap that rules out most of what adults actually use is a ban for most of them. The demand doesn’t disappear. People either go back to cigarettes or buy stronger pouches from someone who doesn’t check ID, doesn’t follow any product standard and doesn’t pay a cent in tax.

We don’t have to guess how this ends. Just look at Canada. One brand of pouch on sale. Capped at 4 mg. Mint or menthol only. Locked behind the pharmacy counter.

The result? Canada’s own health minister now admits illegal pouches are a real problem.

What Spain should do instead

Padilla also wants tobacco taxes as high as possible. But taxing and capping the less harmful option until it looks and costs like a cigarette only makes the cigarette look like the better deal.

Sweden did the opposite. It let adults choose smoke-free products in real strengths, and it now has the lowest smoking rate in the EU.

Want fewer smokers? Then regulate pouches like you mean it. Keep them away from minors. Let adults pick their flavours. Set clear labels and real quality standards. And let people choose the strength that actually keeps them off cigarettes.

Nicotine gum has had 40 years, and it never solved the problem for most smokers. It’s time to stop treating it as the gold standard.