Swedish snus history: the tobacco pinch and the later pouch

Iceberg Dragon Fire in a daytime cafe. The plaque shows 50 mg/g, the concentration printed for this can.

Swedish snus is made from moist, ground tobacco and placed under the upper lip, a practice that dates back to the early 1800s. When Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, an exemption agreed in the 1994 Act of Accession allowed it to continue selling snus despite the EU ban on marketing oral tobacco.

By: Snupax editorial
Date: 19 October 2026
Reading time: 16 minutes

Nicotine pouches are placed under the upper lip in much the same way, but they contain no tobacco leaf. That distinction matters: Sweden’s exemption applies to tobacco snus, not tobacco-free nicotine pouches, which fall outside that product definition. The four products compared below are nicotine pouches, with nicotine amounts checked against their product listings on 19 October 2026.

Contents

• Snus and nicotine pouches: what’s the difference?
• Tobacco in Sweden before the pinch
• The pinch under the lip
• The state company, 1915 to 1967
• The portion pouch in 1973
• The rule Sweden carried into the EU
• A tobacco-free pouch is later
• Four cans on this shelf
• Garant strips are a different card
• What the old name does not settle

Snus and nicotine pouches: what’s the difference?

The word snus is often used for two different products: traditional snus made with tobacco and nicotine pouches that contain no tobacco leaf. Both sit under the upper lip and neither involves burning, which helps explain why the names get mixed up. But they are not the same thing. Our guide to what snus is explains the distinction in more detail. Here, we’ll trace the history of tobacco snus before looking at the tobacco-free pouches sold today.

Traditional snus comes in two forms. Loose snus is moist, ground tobacco that you take a pinch of and place under your lip. Portion snus contains the same type of tobacco, but comes ready-packed in small bags, a format introduced in the 1970s. Nicotine pouches use a similar bag without the tobacco leaf. If you’re unsure which product you’re looking at, check the product type in the Snupax listing.

There’s also dry nasal snuff, an older form of powdered tobacco that was once popular at European courts. As the name suggests, it is taken through the nose rather than placed under the lip. Despite the similar names, it is different from both moist snus and nicotine pouches.

Tobacco in Sweden before the pinch

Jean Nicot was the French ambassador in Portugal from 1559 to 1561. In April 1560 his letters record a package sent to the French court that included tobacco leaves, which he described as medicinal. That is a documented shipment of the plant. It is not a shipment of Swedish snus. The court fashion that grew from tobacco in France was dry nasal snuff, a scented powder. The plant genus Nicotiana was later named for Nicot. Powder sniffed at court and moist tobacco held under a Swedish lip are separated by how they are made and by where they go in the body.

The earliest Swedish record that tobacco historians point to is a Stockholm customs entry from 1601. It concerns tobacco on ships coming from Holland and Wismar. It records an import. A moist oral pinch is a later subject.

Swedish Match, the company that descends from the state tobacco monopoly, dates the first Swedish naming of snus to 1637. Its history page says a customs document records snus brought from Porvoo in Finland. That is the company's statement about a word on a customs paper. The same page puts the change to a pinch under the lip in the early 1800s, perhaps a little earlier. A name in a 1637 entry and a moist farm product in the early 1800s are two events. Treating the two dates as one event makes the oral pinch two centuries older than the split on that page.

That history describes the 1700s as a fashionable habit with a can in gold or silver. It then describes a different habit at the start of the 1800s. Consumers in Sweden began placing a pinch under the lip. Farmers who grew tobacco ground leaf for themselves.

The pinch under the lip

A 2011 paper that uses recipes in the Swedish Tobacco Museum describes Swedish snus as an early-1800s product. One of the oldest formulas it cites is for Ljunglöf's snus. The formula mixes ground tobacco, water, salt and potash. It leaves the mix in a warm place for days before the potash goes in. Those are the ingredients and the broad method in the archived formula. This page does not turn them into measures for a batch at home.

The paper's authors include researchers connected with snus manufacture. This history uses the museum recipe and the date. It leaves the paper's health claims.

Swedish Match's history of the product names the firms that grew up around that moist snus. Jacob Fredrik Ljunglöf took over a Stockholm tobacco firm in 1822. The page traces the firm to a business founded around 1695. Ljunglöf's No. 1 became Ettan. Makers in that century commonly sold a No. 1, a No. 2 and a No. 3. Those numbers stood for grades of quality. Ettan is the survivor of that numbering. It is a brand name from a quality grade. It is not a figure in milligrams.

The same account names Petter Swartz with Röda Lacket and J.A. Boman with General. These are historical tobacco brands in a company chronicle. They are not nicotine pouches. This catalogue does not link them. A 19th-century No. 1 was a quality grade. It does not convert into milligrams per gram or milligrams in one pouch.

The pinch itself was loose tobacco. There was no factory pouch around it yet. The user formed the portion by hand and placed it under the upper lip. The small ready-made pouch comes much later. It still contained tobacco when it arrived.

The state company, 1915 to 1967

AB Svenska Tobaksmonopolet began operations in 1915. Swedish Match's company history gives the reason as money for defence and for the national pension. It says the tobacco plants were taken into the monopoly that year. A separate Swedish tobacco-history account gives a tighter sequence. The Riksdag decided on a state monopoly on 9 September 1914. The charter is dated 15 December 1914. Operations started on 1 June 1915. The same account says the first year still listed 103 snus marks, because the monopoly had taken over existing factories and their products. The state company did not begin with one blank brand.

Swedish Match's snus history gives a sales figure for the early monopoly years: 7,000 tons sold in 1919, in a Sweden it puts at about 6 million people. Both numbers come from the company. It describes the scale of tobacco snus in Sweden at that date. It does not describe a nicotine pouch.

The import and sales monopoly ended in 1961. The manufacturing monopoly ended in 1967. The company history says Svenska Tobaksmonopolet was then turned into a state-owned limited company, Svenska Tobaks AB. From 1967 a private firm could manufacture tobacco again. The oval paper can had been introduced in 1915. In 1967 the firm launched the first round snus can, which it calls the first change to the package since the oval can.

Swedish Match's group history places the tobacco business and the match business together in Procordia in 1992. In 1994 they took the name Swedish Match.

The portion pouch in 1973

Until the portion pouch, the oral product was a pinch of loose tobacco. Swedish Match's 2020 annual report dates the first portion-packed snus in Sweden to 1973. The company timeline uses the same year. The Snus and Match Museum labels a product called Smokeless as that first portion snus. The portion is a measured amount of tobacco in a permeable pouch. The user no longer had to form the pinch by hand. The pouch still held tobacco.

That pouch is the shape people now recognise. Shape is not the ingredient list. A 1973 portion was a new package for moist tobacco. A nicotine pouch, decades later, leaves the tobacco out. Calling every small pouch snus keeps the 1973 package and drops the leaf. The leaf is the part the EU rule below actually names.

The company dates a wider return of interest in snus to the late 1960s and connects that return with published reports on cigarette smoking. This page keeps the date and leaves the health argument. A portion of tobacco is not a treatment. A nicotine pouch is not a treatment. Nothing here is a schedule for stopping smoking.

The rule Sweden carried into the EU

Council Directive 92/41/EEC of 15 May 1992 amended Directive 89/622/EEC and required member states to prohibit the placing on the market of tobacco for oral use. The Advocate General's opinion in Swedish Match, case C-151/17, describes that duty as binding since 1992. Directive 2001/37/EC renewed it. Article 17 of Directive 2014/40/EU keeps it. Article 17 tells member states to prohibit placing tobacco for oral use on the market, without prejudice to Article 151 of the 1994 Act of Accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden.

Article 151 points to Annex XV of that Act. The annex, as the opinion describes it, says the prohibition does not apply to Sweden, except where the product is marketed in a form that resembles a food. Sweden has been a member since 1 January 1995. The exemption is part of the accession terms. It is not a decision taken in 1993. It is not a waiver for every later product that used the word snus.

The 2014 directive defines tobacco for oral use as a tobacco product for the mouth, other than one intended to be inhaled or chewed, made wholly or partly of tobacco, in powder or in particulate form, particularly when it is presented in sachet portions or porous sachets. Nasal snuff is a powder taken through the nose, so the inhaled exception is the line for that older court product. Chewing tobacco is named as outside this definition. A moist Swedish portion is tobacco, in particulate form, in a sachet. That is the product the definition is built to catch. A nicotine pouch is not made of tobacco. The shape of the pouch does not pull it into the definition.

Placing on the market, in ordinary words, means offering the product for sale in a member state. The Swedish exemption lifts that prohibition for the tobacco product inside Sweden. The food-like form stays prohibited. A 2010 report from the European Commission on those accession terms says Sweden was to keep the product off the market in the member states where the directives applied in full. This page does not turn that report into a traveller's allowance. What a person may carry across a border is a question for the customs authority of the country concerned. A tobacco-free pouch does not inherit the exemption. Where a national nicotine rule has not been confirmed, it is not stated here.

A tobacco-free pouch is later

The tobacco-free pouch does not appear in the 1915 monopoly or in the 1973 portion launch. Two dated company statements mark later products of different kinds.

Niconovum, a Swedish company, states that it launched Zonnic in the autumn of 2008. The company describes Zonnic as a tobacco-free nicotine pouch and presents it as a medicine. That is the company's account of its own launch. Zonnic is not one of the cans on this page. This article gives no dose and no medical use. A medicine and a consumer pouch can share a shape and still be regulated differently.

On 15 January 2021 Swedish Match stated that it had launched white nicotine portions in Sweden in 2016 under the name ZYN. In that sentence, white means a portion the company describes as free of tobacco. It does not mean the older white portion of drier tobacco. One colour word is doing two jobs, which is why a colour on a can cannot replace the product-type line. ZYN is named here as a dated launch in the company's own wording. It is not a can in the comparison below.

The gap from 1973 to these later launches is the gap that matters on a shop card. A portion pouch from 1973 held tobacco and falls under the oral-tobacco definition above. A pouch with no tobacco leaf is the later good. The catalogue below is that later good. The EU exemption travelled with the tobacco product, not with the pouch.

Four cans on this shelf

The cans in this section are nicotine pouches. Each card states that product type. None of them is Ettan, General or a 1973 tobacco portion. The prices are the catalogue price and the price from 10 units, as the cards showed on 19 October 2026. The from-10 price is the offer printed for a quantity of 10 or more. It is not a statement of stock.

ICEBERG pouches at 50 mg/g are one current line, including cans sold under exotic flavour names. Iceberg Dragon Fire prints 50 mg/g and 40 mg in the pouch. The flavour line reads fruity. Dragon Fire is the product name. It is not a separate flavour grade.

PABLO flavours and the strength words are a separate brand page. PABLO Exclusive Grape Ice prints 50 mg/g and 30 mg in the pouch. The flavour line reads grape, so the can sits with grape nicotine pouches. Ice in the name stays part of the name. It does not move the can onto a mint shelf. The card has no format line, so this page does not call the pouch slim.

The Garant cans, sorted by variety and strength, are another current range. GARANT Cherry Extreme prints 50 mg/g and 25 mg in the pouch. The flavour line reads cherry, so the can sits with cherry nicotine pouches. Cherry here is a flavour. It is not a reason to file the can under berries.

The CUBA nicotine pouches are the fourth brand here. CUBA Mango prints 16 mg/g and 10.4 mg in the pouch. The flavour line reads mango.

Three of these cans print 50 mg/g. The pouches hold 40 mg, 30 mg and 25 mg. The gram figure is the concentration. The pouch figure is the nicotine in that one pouch. Reading 50 as the portion treats a 0.8 g pouch, a 0.6 g pouch and a 0.5 g pouch as the same portion. CUBA Mango is the same kind of split at 16 mg/g and 10.4 mg. A shared price of €3.97 on the first three cans does not make the pouches the same. Weight, pouch count, strength field and both prices are in the table.

The strength words follow the cards. Extremely strong is the field on Iceberg Dragon Fire and on PABLO Exclusive Grape Ice. Extra strong is the field on GARANT Cherry Extreme. Strong is the field on CUBA Mango. Those words are labels. The milligrams are the comparison. A higher milligram figure is a larger nicotine portion. It is not a step the range expects anyone to climb.

GARANT Cherry Extreme and CUBA Mango on a stone windowsill above an evening street. A picture of two cans carries no strength plaque.

Garant strips are a different card

The Garant page lists nicotine strips as well as nicotine pouches. A strip is a different product type. On these cards the product-type line reads STRIPS and the format line reads STRIP. The nicotine figure is milligrams per strip. These cards have no mg/g line, so the pouch table above does not measure them.

Three cards in that strip line were checked on 20 October 2026. GARANT Spearmint Strips 6mg prints 6 mg per strip. GARANT Black Cherry Strips 11mg and GARANT Frost Berry Strips 11mg print 11 mg per strip. Each pack lists 66 strips and a gram line of 18. The flavour lines read spearmint, black cherry and frost berry. Black cherry is its own flavour field, so the pack does not join the cherry pouches. Frost berry is its own flavour field, so the pack does not join a berry list.

The strength field on all three reads extra strong. The strip figures are 6 mg and 11 mg. Extra strong on GARANT Cherry Extreme is the pouch field next to 25 mg in a 0.5 g pouch. The shared label does not put a strip and a pouch on one scale. To compare strips with each other, look at mg per strip. The same line already includes GARANT Ice Cool Strips 7mg and GARANT Extreme Strips 11mg. 66 is the number of strips in the pack. The portion is the milligrams on one strip.

The catalogue price on each of these three cards is €3.97. The from-10 line is the same €3.97. It is not the lower from-10 price printed on the Cherry Extreme pouch.

What the old name does not settle

A card that says nicotine pouches is the later product. The dates above belong to moist tobacco: a pinch from the early 1800s, a state monopoly from 1915, a round can from 1967 and a portion pouch from 1973. The EU exemption has applied to that tobacco product in Sweden since membership on 1 January 1995. None of those dates is a manufacture date for Iceberg Dragon Fire, PABLO Exclusive Grape Ice, GARANT Cherry Extreme or CUBA Mango.

The 1994 exemption covers tobacco for oral use in Sweden. A food-like form of that tobacco product stays excluded. The exemption does not review a nicotine pouch or a nicotine strip. It does not say where a shop delivers. Personal import remains a customs question for the country concerned.

Garant

The button opens the Garant range in the catalogue. That range lists nicotine pouches and nicotine strips.