Safer than smoking is a very low bar. Smoking is the deadliest consumer product ever sold, and clearing that bar tells you little about whether something is good for you. It only counts if cigarettes are what you'd otherwise be using.

For most users they aren't. About 7 in 10 British pouch users also smoke or vape, so pouches are going in alongside cigarettes rather than instead of them. Topping up your nicotine during the parts of the day you can't smoke does nothing about the cigarettes you still have. About 1 in 6 users never regularly smoked at all, and for them the honest comparison is pouches against nothing

Nicotine has cardiovascular effects of its own. It stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, temporarily increasing heart rate and blood pressure. This may be particularly relevant for people with existing cardiovascular conditions. However, there is currently insufficient long-term research to establish whether nicotine pouch use independently increases the risk of heart attacks or strokes. Although pouches are likely to carry substantially lower cardiovascular risks than cigarettes, they should not be considered risk-free.

Your gums notice too. A pouch sits in the same spot for half an hour or more at a time, and the likely cost is soreness, ulcers and gum recession where it sits. The research here is thin. And nicotine itself isn't linked to mouth cancer, so keep this one in proportion.

The dose is unregulated. Licensed nicotine gum comes in 2mg and 4mg strengths, the doses it was tested at. Pouches have no legal limit. Nobody can see or smell one either, so dependence is easy to build and easy to miss.