Nicotine Pouch Use Increasing Amongst Athletes

Nicotine Pouches are becoming popular amongst people looking to switch from smoking tobacco to using a tobacco free and smokeless alternative for taking in Nicotine. They offer a considerably safer and healthier alternative for nicotine as does not contain any form of tobacco or the toxins and chemicals that normally come in unison with smoking and tobacco use.

Not only are people switching from smoking tobacco, they’re also changing from using oral tobacco products like Snus and preferring to use Nicotine Pouches, and a group of people that are starting to do this which has been hitting the headlines recently are professional athletes, most notably Baseball players within the Major League Baseball leagues in America.

In this blog, I’m going to look at the long and extensive history of Oral tobacco usage within the MLB, how it was previously promoted and encouraged to be used by the players and the reasons why today that they are now using Nicotine Pouches to get their Nicotine fix. Let’s get into it!

Oral Tobacco usage in the MLB

As mentioned, Major League Baseball has somewhat of a long and extensive history with oral tobacco and the usage of it amongst their players. Spanning right back to 1912, a popular brand of chewing tobacco called Bull Durham, a brand created by the American Tobacco Company started aggressively advertising their brand by erecting huge wooden bull statues outside and around the stadiums where the big MLB teams played their games. Meaning they would be in plain sight of all spectators and players while they’re at the stadiums.

On top of this, American Tobacco Company decided to incentivise players for perform better by offering them $50 cash money as well as 72 sacks of tobacco as a reward for every home run that they hit. A wild incentive on paper, and what is interesting about it is that ATC paid out over $10,000 in prize money as well as shelling out over 250,000 sacks of tobacco to the home run hitting players.

Whilst this may have cost American Tobacco Company a considerable amount of cash as well as product, their sales absolutely sky rocketed during this period, with people being influenced by the massive Bull statues as well as seeing their favourite players chewing on the tobacco during games, and this is widely considered to be the most influential and successful advertising campaigns within Baseball, as well as sport on the whole in the 20^th century.

The usage and promotion of Oral Tobacco products continued for many years following this, with the Minor League Baseball team called the Durham Bulls still existing in modern day and they still even have the massive wooden bull statue outside their stadium, the usage and promotion of oral tobacco within the sport has somewhat subdued compared to what it was.

A Ban on Smokeless Tobacco is introduced

A ban on the use of smokeless tobacco by any new player within the MLB was introduced in 2016, with it widely believed that this was bought in due to the untimely death of one of MLB’s biggest stars who unfortunately passed away from mouth cancer.

The deal wasn’t as simple and straight forward as it sounds, as it was more of a bargaining deal which was made, which meant any player that had at least one day of ‘Major League service’ before the date of the ban taking effect was exempt and could still continue to use smokeless tobacco during play time.

In addition to the ban applying to new players, there was also other criteria which stretched out to the whole field of players within the Major League. No major league player would be permitted to take the field or enter the dugout with a tin/package/sack of smokeless tobacco stashed within their uniform/kit once fans are present within the stadium. And on top of this, they were strictly prohibited from using these products whilst on camera conducting interviews, as the MLB acknowledged that Baseball stars are role models to many fans, especially those of younger age, and encouraging the use of smokeless tobacco products, whether it be direct or subliminal will not continue any further. A complete contrast to the rules and regulations previously seen some 90 years prior.

And with this ban, the presence of smokeless tobacco started becoming very minimal compared to what it was, and whilst some players did still use it, the volume was a fraction from years previous. And in 2022, over 50% of MLB teams officially banned the use of tobacco in any form by their players and within the stadiums, with all players now being affected by this ban, not just the “legacy” players from when it was first introduced in 2016.

With this new ban sending ripples through the whole MLB, the players were still in need of their nicotine fix, and it’s been widely seen that these players are now swapping the tins that they carry round with them. From chewing/loose leaf tobacco to the considerably safer option for nicotine…Tins of Nicotine Pouches.

Nicotine Pouches provide the Loophole that players were looking for

As mentioned, the ban imposed in 2022 sent ripples through the whole of the MLB and left many players clutching to get hold of an alternative from oral tobacco to help curb their cravings for nicotine at bay, and also as a way to try and quit tobacco, or at least hide that they’re still using it outside of the stadiums. And in somewhat of a divine intervention, along came the newest product for Nicotine consumption that carried significantly less risk than chewing tobacco and provided a subtle and discreet method for Nicotine than doesn’t involve chewing or having a bulging lower lip from the wad of loose tobacco stashed in there.

Players from within the MLB have been quoted to say they use Nicotine Pouches to help them beat their addiction to tobacco, with DL Hall saying to Fox Sports “I used Zyns to get off using Dips. They’re still addictive because of the chemicals, but don’t have the same harmful chemicals like what tobacco does.”

An interesting take on Nicotine Pouches by the rookie pitcher there. To clear a few bits up from there, a lot of Americans will use the term “Zyns” when referring to Nicotine Pouches. This is a hugely popular brand of Nicotine Pouches (I’ll explain more below) and a lot of them just use this as a type cast for all Nicotine Pouches even though there are multiple other brands out there.

And “Dips” is the most commonly used name to refer to oral tobacco products, meaning you “dip” your hand in the sack, grab tobacco and then put it in your mouth. This is not to be confused with Dip Nicotine Pouches that we sell here on Snusmail, completely different products!!

It’s also good to see someone promoting the use of Nicotine Pouches as well as acknowledging the safety and health benefits of them, by speaking about the lack of harmful chemicals found in them compared to that found in tobacco because that is a fact.

Nicotine Pouch usage in America really has increased, and it largely does come down to the marketing strategies and promotion of a brand, which has grown from strength to strength in recent times, and that brand is Zyn. Let me tell you a little more about Zyn…

Zyn Nicotine Pouches

Zyn is a brand of Nicotine Pouches created by Swedish Match, and they are the number one selling brand of Nicotine Pouches in the USA, as well as being sold in high volumes across Europe also.

Reports have surfaced in the last few months from Swedish Match themselves which showed that the brand Zyn was responsible for nearly two thirds of Nicotine Pouch sales over the preceding year which is just crazy! And to give you a hindsight of just how much this brand has grown, Zyn sold 6 million cans in 2019, fast forward two years and the company report sales of over 37 million cans of Nicotine Pouches, a whopping 516% increase over the course of 2 years, a statistic that cannot be ignored or scoffed at.

Other brands of Nicotine Pouches are popular in the USA, but not like what Zyn is and the work they are doing to market and advertise their products is admirable. And at the tail end of 2022, Swedish Match was acquired by Philip Morris International for a huge sum of money, and to me, this can only signal bigger and better things will be coming for Zyn and the legitimacy of Nicotine Pouches and the usage of them amongst people, not just athletes.

Why do athletes use Nicotine?

Whilst Nicotine is a highly addictive chemical that can create an addiction that is hard to overcome, it does actually have a lot of benefits, and those benefits are very useful to people, especially athletes who are competing at the highest level of competition.

Nicotine can greatly help short-term memory and also reaction times, which is crucial for athletes in sport and also it can help create a higher sense of focus, meaning athletes can “dial in” a lot easier to focus on the task at hand.

Using Nicotine Pouches to get their nicotine hit is a much more effective way than smoking or vaping, as using White Pouches doesn’t bring the risk of having to inhale anything which may irritate the airways as well as affecting lung capacity and function.

Nicotine can also play a part in weight management, with it being a well known appetite suppressant, so if athletes have to be a specific weight for the sport they compete in, using Nicotine Pouches can curb the cravings for wanting junk food and over eating, especially before a big game/event.