This year’s Almedalen Week made one thing difficult to ignore: nicotine pouches remains a serious political issue in Sweden.
Almedalen Week is Sweden’s annual political gathering on Gotland, where parties, parliamentarians, civil society, businesses and media meet for public debates, seminars and policy discussions. Since Sweden is ahead of most EU countries on nicotine pouches and remains a determined defender of harm reduction, we believe the trends emerging here offer an early indication of where the wider European debate may be heading.
Across the week, close to ten seminars, debates and side events addressed snus, nicotine pouches, youth access, EU regulation and harm reduction. The official programme included discussions on Sweden’s nicotine policy ahead of the election, voter attitudes towards snus and vaping, mandatory age verification, the future of nicotine regulation in the EU and the wider question of whether Sweden should defend its own approach in Brussels.
The format was familiar but important. Panels typically brought together Members of Parliament, party representatives, public-health voices, researchers, consumer organisations and industry stakeholders. Increasingly, the discussions concerned the more difficult questions: how should they be regulated, who should be protected, how should adult access work, and what should Sweden do when EU policy risks treating cigarettes and smoke-free nicotine products as though they carried the same risk?
ENPA took part in meetings and discussions throughout the week, engaging with political representatives, stakeholders and experts on the future of nicotine pouches.
Pouchforum participated in the panel “The Future of Swedish Nicotine Policy in Europe”, which brought together Members of Parliament, party representatives and public-health experts to discuss how the forthcoming EU reviews of tobacco-product and tobacco-tax rules could affect Sweden’s approach to snus and nicotine pouches. Representing the Brussels perspective, Pouchforum highlighted the risk that EU legislation could overlook the Swedish experience and stressed the need for proportionate, evidence-based rules that distinguish combustible tobacco from smoke-free nicotine products.
Through contacts, Pouchforum also learned that the Food Workers’ Union, which has been particularly vocal on snus and nicotine pouches, hosted a dedicated gathering for Social Democrats. That matters politically. With many expecting the Social Democrats to perform strongly in the autumn election, the issue is clearly moving beyond the traditional public health versus prohibition divide and into the core of Swedish party politics.
The overall impression from Almedalen was that the debate has become more balanced than in previous years. There appears to be broad parliamentary support for keeping nicotine pouches available as part of Sweden’s harm-reduction approach, while strengthening rules aimed at preventing youth access and irresponsible marketing.
That does not mean that all concerns have disappeared. Nor should they. Nicotine is not risk-free, and products should be regulated. But a growing number of participants appeared tired of poorly substantiated claims from Brussels and of a precautionary principle applied as though there are no differences in risk between products.
The precautionary principle has a role in public health. But it cannot mean analyzing nicotine products in a vacuum, detached from the reality that more than 80 million Europeans still smoke cigarettes. The question is not whether nicotine pouches are completely harmless. The question is whether adult smokers should have access to nicotine products that avoid combustion, the process responsible for the overwhelming share of smoking-related disease.
That contrast was visible even before the discussions began. At the airport, banners comparing smoking rates in France and Sweden made the point clearly: around 24 percent of adults smoke in France, compared with roughly 5 percent in Sweden. International comparisons vary depending on the survey and age group used, but Sweden consistently records among the lowest smoking rates in Europe, while France remains above 24 percent in several international datasets.
This is not a trivial difference. Sweden’s experience shows that nicotine use and smoking do not have to move together. Daily smoking has continued to decline even though nicotine use remains relatively common. Among Swedes aged 16 to 29, daily smoking is reported at around 2.3 percent. The practical question for critics of harm reduction remains simple: if nicotine pouches are truly a gateway to smoking, where are the smokers?
The increasingly heated rhetoric from parts of the European Commission has not helped. However, there are few if any traces of Commissioner Olivér Varhelyis’ statements that alternatives to cigarettes can be as harmful as, or even more harmful than, smoking. Those statements were as far as we heard only used as examples of inaccurate and misleading propaganda.
What Pouchforum saw in Almedalen suggested that Swedish politicians are beginning to push back more clearly against this framing. The debate is slowly moving away from the old smoking trenches. That is welcome.
Europe now faces a genuinely new situation. Adults can consume nicotine in ways that are not risk-free, but that are not associated with the main health harms linked to smoking. Those harms are primarily driven by combustion, smoke inhalation and toxic exposure from burning tobacco, not by nicotine alone.
The task ahead is therefore not to avoid regulating nicotine products, nor to pretend they are harmless. It is to take a step back from preconceived assumptions, assess the situation as it stands and regulate them intelligently and in the context where we are: strict age limits, robust enforcement, responsible marketing, proportionate taxation and clear product standards, while preserving access for adults who would otherwise smoke.
Almedalen 2026 may not have resolved the nicotine debate. But it showed that Sweden is increasingly prepared to have the right one.