For the past five years, Gabby Masseron has loved working as a bartender in Denver, Colorado — even if it means the occasional sticky floor or messy table. Recently, that professional joy was put to the test by a small piece of trash now found everywhere from under tables to empty drink glasses: used nicotine pouches.
“I started noticing them last year, people spitting them out on the floor, in the urinal, anywhere but the trash,” Masseron, 23, told NBC News. “It used to be gum under the tables, now it’s just zines.”
Masseron said he hears from other bartenders that nicotine pouches like Zin — small packets that deliver nicotine through the gums without smoke or vapor — are one of the fastest-growing segments of the tobacco market.
Small disposable sachets of nicotine salt and other chemicals are now almost everywhere – and that’s part of the problem.
The pouches, sold by different companies, come in different sizes and flavors – and last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and 45 minutes, depending on their potency. Sales of nicotine pouches, stored in circular, gum-like dispensers, rose 641% from 2019 to 2022, despite the rise of other tobacco alternatives such as vapes, according to 2024 research cited in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Even sanitation officials note that as they have grown in popularity, pouches now rival the cigarette butt as the most visible and environmentally damaging remnant of smoking.
“We don’t necessarily track every specific type of litter, but I can tell you that nicotine pouches (and their predecessor, cigarette butts) represent a unique problem for us — everyone knows not to litter, but for some reason people think these little things don’t count,” said Joshua Goodman, deputy commissioner of public affairs for New York City.
“Obviously, they’re just as much trash as a coffee cup or a bag of chips, and obviously they go in the corner trash or in your trash at home,” he said.
Jonathan Alpert, a New York and Washington, DC-based psychotherapist and author of the forthcoming book “Therapy Nation,” explained that in many ways nicotine pouches are “becoming the cigarette pieces of the smoke-free era” because users can enjoy the product multiple times a day in public places where they smoke or smoke.
“The litter problem is partly behavioral,” he said. “Cigarette smokers were already accustomed to blowing out a butt. With pouches, users would remove them quickly and discreetly, and the nearest place to discard them would be the golf course, the bottom of a bar table, or the sidewalk. It’s less visible than smoking but creates its own kind of mess.”
Online, bartenders, restaurant workers and patrons expressed outrage at the pouches being left behind. Taking her complaints about the pouches to TikTok, Masseron told her followers that “even though she washes them 1,000 times, she also throws away drinking glasses with used pouches.”
Some bars have taken to posting signs asking people to dispose of their bags in the trash.
“It’s very disgusting and disgusting,” Masseron said. “I’ve heard this from many other bartenders … they look for zines everywhere, especially under tables.”
Zyn is the most popular brand of nicotine pouches, but the company now faces a variety of competition from many other companies offering their own versions of the product. Some have started pushing sachets containing caffeine or just flavor.
A spokesperson for PMI US, which markets Zyn in the United States, said the company encourages responsible use and disposal. The company’s website notes that used bags should be collected in the top compartment of the dispenser before being disposed of in the trash. Empty cans made of recyclable plastic can be reused after washing.
“PMI US is invested in marketing our products responsibly and providing nicotine consumers of legal age with better alternatives to smoking and other traditional tobacco products, and we encourage them to use and dispose of the product responsibly,” a spokesperson told NBC News via email.
However, city sanitation officials say the problem extends beyond nicotine pouches.
Goodman, the deputy commissioner, said the New York Department of Sanitation has issued nearly 6,000 summonses this year for dirty sidewalks, though those violations include all kinds of litter. He pointed to sweeping changes in nicotine waste: A recent waste characterization study found that New York City’s trash now contains nearly one million pounds of discarded vapes.
“People think it’s harmless, but it damages the look and feel of our city streets,” Goodman said of nicotine pouches. “I’d say it’s growing compared to cigarette sticks and gum, but those are all problems.”
