On 14 October the FDA named four new voting members of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee and opened nominations for two remaining seats, with a Federal Register notice following on 15 October. Nothing else moved on the federal pouch beat: the authorised nicotine pouch list is still 43 products from two companies, unchanged since 21 August.
This is a committee story rather than a product story, and I want to be straight about that up front. If you were waiting for the next tranche of authorisations, a denial, a rule or a court ruling, none of that happened. What happened is that the advisory committee which can review applications for new tobacco products changed shape — and since every pouch sold legally in the United States got there through an application, that is worth a few hundred words.
What happened
FDA published an announcement on 14 October 2026 requesting nominations for voting members of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, and in the same post named four new voting members and one new alternate non-voting member. The formal Federal Register notice appeared the next day at 91 FR 65592, docket FDA-2026-N-11624, signed by Grace R. Graham, Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Legislation, and International Affairs.
The two open seats are specified narrowly. From the notice: “Specifically, TPSAC is seeking to fill 2 voting member vacancies with physicians, dentists, scientists, or health care professionals practicing in the areas of oncology, pulmonology, cardiology, toxicology, pharmacology, addiction, engineering, or any other relevant specialty.” The deadline that matters is 14 December: “Nominations received on or before December 14, 2026 will be given first consideration for membership on the TPSAC. Nominations received after December 14, 2026 will be considered as later vacancies arise.” Anyone can nominate, and self-nominations are accepted.
The four new voting members are Holger Behrsing, Ph.D.; Kim “Skip” Murray, serving as the representative of the general public; Margaret Nolan, M.D.; and Andrew A. Strasser, Ph.D. FDA’s description of them: “The new members have expertise that spans preventative medicine, chronic diseases, tobacco cessation and harm reduction, toxicology, cell biology, and health communication.” A new alternate non-voting member, Eric Ray Walker, Ph.D., represents the interests of tobacco growers.
One correction worth making before anyone else repeats it. FDA announced those four on 14 October, but its own roster gives all four terms as running from 12 July 2026 to 6 July 2030. The appointments took effect three months before they were announced. This is not FDA appointing anyone this week; it is FDA telling us about July.
Why it matters for pouches
TPSAC is advisory, and FDA is not bound by what it says. But its remit, in the notice’s own words, is not trivial: the committee “may provide recommendations to the Commissioner regarding any regulations to be promulgated under Section 917 of the Tobacco Control Act (TCA) and may review any applications for new tobacco products or petitions for exemption under Section 906(e) of the FD&C Act.” It “reviews and evaluates safety, dependence, and health issues relating to tobacco products”. The committee has twelve members, of whom nine vote, including the chair, and the final voting seat belongs to a representative of the general public.
Two things on the current roster are worth knowing if you read pouch science at all. The sitting manufacturer-industry representative is Maria Gogova, M.D., Ph.D., listed as “Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, Altria Client Services, LLC”, with a term from 11 December 2023 to 1 December 2027. Altria Client Services is an affiliate of Helix Innovations, which makes on! — one of only two companies with any authorised pouch — and it funded the only published side-by-side physical characterisation of competing pouch brands. I state the chain and allege nothing by it: an industry representative seat is a formal part of the committee’s charter, and Gogova does not vote. But if you are reading an industry-funded pouch study one day and an FDA advisory roster the next, it is worth knowing they overlap.
The roster also still carries Sven-Eric Jordt, Ph.D., of Duke, with expertise listed as “Tobacco Science, Pharmacology, Toxicology” and a term ending 31 January 2027 — relevant because the receptor pharmacology behind why pouches sting is his field, and the regulators have published essentially nothing on it.
As of the roster’s 14 October update, the committee has two vacancies and no meeting scheduled.
Nothing else on this beat moved
I checked, and the quiet is the other half of the story. The authorised nicotine pouch list reads, today, exactly as it did when I last looked in September: “This list is up to date. There are 43 nicotine pouch products authorized by the FDA. These are the only nicotine pouch products that may be lawfully sold in the United States.” Still two manufacturers — twelve products from Helix Innovations, thirty-one from Swedish Match USA — and still dated 21 August 2026, which is the day of the last authorisation announcement. FDA says it “intends to update www.fda.gov/authorizednicotinepouches with new products the day of a nicotine pouch authorization”, so an unchanged date is meaningful rather than merely stale. FDA’s standing caveat travels with the list: “While these products are authorized to be sold in the United States, it does not mean these products are safe, nor are they ‘FDA approved.'”
The marketing orders page is likewise unchanged, still current as of 28 August 2026 — no new marketing granted orders and no new denials. The two import alerts that reach pouches were both last published on 18 September. There were no tobacco or nicotine items in the Federal Register in the past three weeks other than the TPSAC notice itself, and no federal court decision on FDA tobacco authority.
What circulated without a primary document
Three things I saw referred to as news this week that I will not report as news:
- The expected next round of pouch authorisations. There is no order, no announcement, no addition to the list and no Federal Register notice. FDA does not publish pending applications at all, so there is nothing to find — which is why the correct description of an unauthorised product is always “not authorised”, never “denied”.
- Philip Morris International’s third-quarter figures and ZYN volumes. Widely previewed, but as of today there is no 8-K and no press release in EDGAR. There is no citable ZYN shipment figure in any document dated this week, and I could not confirm the reporting date from a primary source either, so I am not printing one.
- August, recirculating. FDA’s authorisation of four pouches on 11 August and eleven more on 21 August keeps resurfacing on retail and trade sites as though current. Both are real and both are already reflected in the count of 43. A document from August is not this week’s news.
One gap in my own checking, declared rather than papered over: I could not complete a sweep of congressional activity. congress.gov returned a Cloudflare block and both the congress.gov and govinfo search APIs were rate-limited on the public key. So read the absence of a bill story here as “not checked”, not as “nothing happened”.
Previous issues on this beat: 11 October and 4 October. Where each market stands is tracked in the global nicotine pouch regulation tracker.
Sources
- FDA. FDA Seeks Nominations for the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee; Announces New Members, 14 October 2026.
- 91 FR 65592, “Request for Nominations for Voting Members on a Public Advisory Committee; Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC)”, Docket No. FDA-2026-N-11624, published 15 October 2026 (FR Doc 2026-21027, filed 14 October 2026).
- FDA. TPSAC roster, content current as of 14 October 2026 — member terms, expertise listings and vacancy count.
- FDA. Nicotine Pouch Products Authorized by the FDA, content current as of 21 August 2026, read 16 October 2026.
