The French Embassy in Norway has confirmed that snus containing tobacco remains legal to bring into France and use for personal purposes. At the same time, nicotine pouches that contain no tobacco at all, the product sold across Sweden and used by hundreds of thousands of people to quit smoking, remain banned.
For consumers who have switched from cigarettes to nicotine pouches, the distinction is hard to understand.
“France is telling us tobacco snus is fine but the version without tobacco is not,” said Juan Taborcía, Global Spokesperson of Considerate Pouchers. “That is backwards. The product with no tobacco in it is the one getting banned.”
Sweden is already the first smoke-free country in the world, a result widely credited to the availability of snus and nicotine pouches as alternatives to cigarettes. France, by contrast, has one of the highest smoking rates on the continent, 24%. Public health researchers have repeatedly pointed to nicotine pouches as a tool that helps smokers quit and reduces the harm associated with tobacco use.
“It is strange to watch a country with one of Europe’s worst smoking rates ban the product that has the best track record of getting people off cigarettes,” said Taborcía. “Meanwhile the version that still contains tobacco stays legal. Consumers are left to make sense of a rule that does not match the evidence.”
The embassy notice draws a clear line: white, all-white, and brown snus sold in Norway, all of which carry a mandatory minimum tobacco content, can still be brought into and used in France. Pure nicotine products, including the all-white snus sold in Sweden that contains no tobacco, fall under France’s total ban on nicotine-only products.
The pouchers’ organization argues that EU and national regulators should look at the outcome Sweden has achieved and ask why the least harmful products are the ones facing the strictest restrictions.
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