Nicotine pouches are among the most promising non-combustible tools available to adults seeking to move away from smoking. Tobacco-free and smoke-free, they are increasingly used by former smokers as a lower-risk alternative. Despite this potential, nicotine pouches are facing mounting legal and regulatory pressure across the United States.
The US Pouch Index 2026 highlights a fragmented policy landscape. While some states recognise that nicotine pouches are distinct from tobacco, that flavours and access matter for adult switching, and that taxation should reflect relative risk, many others continue to regulate them as if they were cigarettes.
Beneath the surface, restrictive approaches are gaining ground. Misclassification, excessive taxation, and limits on sales and availability are often justified by precautionary narratives that overstate risks and overlook how nicotine pouches are actually used, repeating familiar policy mistakes from earlier harm-reduction debates.
We ranked all fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, to inform consumers about nicotine pouch policies in their locality and highlight the need for sober decision-making informed by all available evidence, as well as to compare best practices across states. We used seven factors: whether the state considers nicotine pouches to be tobacco products, state-level flavor restrictions, state registries (which mirror the FDA-authorized database and those awaiting a decision), whether nicotine pouches are taxed more than cigarettes (via higher or additional excise taxes), the presence/absence of online sales bans, restrictions on the points of sale, and the presence/absence of a legal cap on the concentration of nicotine found in retail pouches.
Our first edition of this index uses statements by state authorities, real-time legal updates, tax authority records, and press articles on the topic. You will find that the index uses a recognizable final mark system where states are ranked from A+ to F based on their raw scores. For more information, we have included the methodology section at the end of the paper, where we go into more detail about how we defined and operationalized each criterion and why we chose the variables that we did.
Please note that legal developments reflect the latest available information at the time of this report (January 2026).
The overall distribution of scores points to a clear regulatory divide. While an A remains the most common grade, the median state falls into the B range, indicating that at least half of U.S. states still apply multiple restrictive measures to nicotine pouches. This reflects a persistent scepticism that continues to shape policy, even where harm-reduction alternatives are available.
The lowest performers illustrate how this scepticism translates into heavy-handed regulation. California sits at the very bottom of the index, followed by Washington, D.C., both of which broadly conflate nicotine pouches with combustible tobacco, impose high taxes, restrict flavours, and limit legal access through registries or sales bans. These approaches create legal uncertainty, raise compliance costs, and reduce lawful availability.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are states such as Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arizona, and West Virginia, which clearly distinguish nicotine pouches from cigarettes, avoid flavour bans and registries, allow wide retail and online access, and apply lower, risk-proportionate taxes. Together, these best and worst performers highlight a growing split between states embracing harm-reduction principles and those doubling down on prohibitionist frameworks.
Entries that received an A+ or A in this assessment are best positioned to harness the potential of nicotine pouches to help with smoking cessation. The upsides to living in any of the highest-ranked states are clearer policy-level perspectives on the differences between nicotine pouches and tobacco (and the ability to educate consumers on the topic), higher taxes on cigarettes than pouches (incentivizing the far less harmful option), allowing consumers to better tailor their pouching experiences to their needs via online sales and adequate concentrations, promoting local convenience stores, gas stations, vape shops and other independent businesses (which are likelier to suffer from onerous operating and maintenance costs derived from stringent point of sale restrictions), and looking for better ways to protect young people while preserving consumer choice for adults.
Research Director
Head of External Affairs
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