Patrick Hildingsson, Swedish Match vice president for communications and public affairs
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Swedish Match, the makers of oral nicotine pouches that were touted to have played a major role in the decline of cigarette smoking in Sweden, continue to innovate their product line to help the country reach smoke-free status sooner.
Patrik Hildingsson, Swedish Match vice president for communications and public affairs, told a group of visiting journalists from the Philippines that he is positive that Sweden will achieve smoke-free status “within a very near future, most optimistically, maybe next year.”
Smoke-free is defined as a society having a smoking prevalence of 5 percent or below. Sweden is at 5.6 percent smoking prevalence, according to the Public Health Agency of Sweden’s data.
The steady decline in smoking prevalence in Sweden happened along the resurgence of snus. Snus is an oral tobacco product that originated in Sweden more than 200 years ago. It is made of ground tobacco leaves inside a small pouch, which is placed under the lips.
Swedish Match continues to innovate and improve on snus and have developed its latest iteration. Branded as ZYN, this oral nicotine product is made of food-grade ingredients laced with nicotine and comes in a pouch, but without the tobacco. Nicotine pouches form part of the category of smoke-free products, alternatives to smoking which do not burn and do not produce harmful smoke.
Hildingsson said they “used the learnings from Swedish snus and then put that as a platform” to further improve the product to meet varying consumer preferences.
“The main difference here is that it doesn’t contain tobacco. We extract nicotine in tobacco and then we add it. So even though Swedish snus is regarded as a low, low chemical type of tobacco product compared to other tobacco products, we have lowered them even more (with ZYN),” he said.
“We can quite firmly say that ZYN is a better option than cigarettes and other combustible products,” he said.
ZYN recently gained popularity in the US, capturing the attention of legal-aged smokers wanting to get nicotine but without the smoke or vape emission that can annoy other people around. News reports noted that 358 million cans of ZYN were shipped to the US in 2023, a 62% increase from the previous year.
Swedish Match was acquired by Philip Morris international in 2022 aimed at accelerating its smoke-free future vision. PMI said in an earlier statement that the acquisition “will enable us to provide access to a broader range of better alternatives for those adult smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke.”
ZYN was among the brands presented during the Technovation in Neuchatel, Switzerland last week, an event that provides media the opportunity to engage PMI’s senior leaders, scientists and research and development experts.
“Since the early 70s, snus has experienced an unbroken growth trend, and the cigarette is declining. Given the harm caused by cigarette smoking, governments are putting a lot of national campaigns, original campaigns to the play,” said. Hildingsson.
Hildingsson also credited the Swedes’ receptiveness to adopt health trends. “I don’t know why, but we Swedes, we have a tendency to adopt the new trends when it comes to health. We read about them and we jump on them,” he said.
Sweden’s tobacco control policies rank in the middle among the members of the European Union. “Sweden has ever since been an average country, so we are not better or worse than the average EU country in implementing tobacco control measures, but when it comes to the output and the idea that the policy are supposed to deliver, we outperform every country,” Hildingsson said.
Along with the decline of cigarette smoking, the lung cancer prevalence in Sweden dramatically went down compared to other European countries.
Citing public health data, Hildingsson said the lung cancer incidence among the Swedish population is less than half of the European Union average. He also noted the decline of oral, esophagus, and neck cancer in Sweden.
“Many believe that nicotine causes cancer, well, at least the IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, they do not classify nicotine as a carcinogen,” Hildingsson said.
While countries implement different levels of tobacco control with varying success, Hildingsson opined that perhaps they should look into Sweden. “What will the government do when they have implemented all measures they can come up with and still the European smokes. I have to believe that down the road and given the developments in Scandinavia, they might say, Okay, guess what? Maybe we should look into the Scandinavian countries. What have they done differently? And what can we learn from them?”