Start at the bottom of whichever ladder the brand you are buying uses — 3 mg on ZYN’s scale, 4 mg on VELO’s — and treat the number on the tin as a label, not a dose. The one pharmacokinetic study of pouches with no tobacco-industry funding found that a mid-range 9 mg pouch produced a higher peak blood nicotine than a cigarette, and made the lightest nicotine users in the room feel sick.
I want to be blunt about why this article exists. Almost every strength guide you will read starts from the assumption that the milligram figure printed on a can of nicotine pouches means something fixed, and that you can work out where to start by comparing those figures. Neither assumption survives contact with the manufacturers’ own pages. The number on the tin is sometimes a per-pouch figure, sometimes a per-gram figure, and sometimes — on one product I will come to — a per-gram figure printed as if it were the product’s name. Nobody is obliged to tell you which.
So this is a guide to choosing a first strength in a market where the units are not standardised. The short version is at the top. The rest is the evidence, including the places where the evidence contradicts itself, because those are the places where the usual advice is quietly guessing.
The number on the tin has no agreed basis
Three brand-owner pages, three different practices.
VELO states its basis explicitly. BAT’s own product page says VELO pouches are “available in a range of nicotine strengths from 4mg to 17mg per pouch” (velo.com). Per pouch. Unambiguous.
ZYN states no basis at all. Its strengths page runs the ladder “Low (3mg)”, “Medium (6mg)”, “Strong (9mg)”, “X-Strong (11mg)”, “XX-Strong (13.5mg)”, “Max (16.5mg)”, and the closest it comes to saying what the unit refers to is “Each ZYN pouch contains a specific amount of nicotine, measured in milligrams (mg)” (zyn.com, published 27 July 2025). I could not find any ZYN page that publishes a pouch weight in grams, which means you cannot convert the figure yourself even if you want to.
And then there is the case that makes the problem concrete. A product sold as “Pablo Exclusive 50mg Frosted Ice” carries, on the same page as that name, “Nicotine content: 50mg/g”, a per-gram line of 50.0 mg, a per-product line of 30.0 mg, and a pouch weight of 0.6 g across 20 pouches (ngpeurope.eu). The 50 in the product name is a concentration. The amount in the pouch is 30 mg. That is a 1.67× difference between the number a shopper reads as the strength and the number the same page gives as the content. For what it is worth, NGP Europe is a wholesale distributor rather than the manufacturer, and does not state its relationship to N.G.P Tobacco ApS, so I treat it as a seller’s spec sheet rather than a maker’s.
This is not my observation alone. Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment made the same point in 2022, noting that “some manufacturers meant the nicotine content per pouch and others per gram. However, this fact is not apparent to the consumer”. If you want the arithmetic worked through properly, I have done it at length in mg per pouch vs mg per gram.
What is on the label, what is in the pouch, and what reaches you are three different numbers
Here the evidence is unusually good, because a publicly funded German team measured all three.
Mallock-Ohnesorg and colleagues, funded by “intermural funding from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), grant No. BfR-CPS-08-60-0102-02.P606” and declaring no commercial relationships, report: “Analyzed nicotine contents were 4.8 ± 0.4 mg, 16.3 ± 3.1 mg, and 27.1 ± 0.2 mg for the nicotine pouches declared with 6, 20, and 30 mg, respectively.” So a pouch sold as 20 mg held 16.3 mg.
Then the amount that actually left the pouch during use: “mean nicotine doses extracted were 1.8 ± 0.8 mg, 4.7 ± 3.5 mg, and 14.1 ± 3.0 mg for the pouches with a nominal nicotine content of 6, 20, and 30 mg, respectively” (Frontiers in Pharmacology, 22 May 2024).
Sit with the middle figure. Declared 20 mg. Contained 16.3 mg. Gave up 4.7 mg. The number on the tin was roughly four times the amount that came out of the pouch in use — and that is before anything is lost to swallowing rather than absorbed through the lining of the mouth. BfR’s own opinion puts the absorbed share at “at least half of the nicotine in the pouch can be absorbed”, which is the furthest any regulator I can find will go.
Industry data points the same way on extraction. In a Swedish Match-funded study, “the extracted fractions of nicotine for both ZYN products (56% and 59%) were significantly larger than for 8 mg General (32%)” after sixty minutes.
The practical consequence is that the label is a ceiling, not a dose, and the gap between label and dose is not the same across products. A 6 mg pouch that releases most of its content can out-deliver an 11 mg pouch that holds on to it. That is why I would not pick a first strength by comparing numbers across brands, and why the sensible move is to pick the bottom of one brand’s own ladder and learn what that feels like before going anywhere else.
The one independent study is the one that should set your expectations
Almost all pouch pharmacokinetics is paid for by pouch manufacturers. One study is not.
Przulj, Myers Smith, McRobbie, Pesola, Ananina, Ladmore and Hajek, at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health at Queen Mary University of London, state their funding as “N/A, the study was funded by internal funds” and declare “The authors declare no competing interests”. Twenty adult smokers used “ZYN ‘Cool Mint’ pouches containing 9 mg of nicotine”, kept in “for up to 45 min, as per the manufacturer’s guidance, but to feel free to remove it whenever they wanted”.
The result, verbatim: “Pouches delivered nicotine more slowly than cigarettes (Tmax 30 min vs. 6 min, z =-3.93, p < 0.001)" and "Cmax was higher than from cigarettes (27.9 vs. 19.5 ng/ml, t (19) =-2.17, p = 0.043)." Also: "Nicotine absorption from the pouches was rapid, reaching 13ng/ml in 10 min, and it remained high at 60 min" (Psychopharmacology, 12 December 2025).
And then the part that bears directly on choosing a strength: “Three participants who were light smokers experienced nausea and one vomited.” One subject “experienced nausea, dizziness and hiccups and removed the pouch after 3 min”.
Nine milligrams is ZYN’s “Strong” — the fourth rung of a six-rung ladder, sitting on the same shelf as the 3 mg. It is not an extreme product. In the only study where nobody selling pouches paid for the answer, it beat a cigarette on peak blood nicotine and the lightest users got sick. I take that as the strongest available argument for starting low even if you are a heavy smoker, and a decisive one if you are not.
The industry studies disagree with it, and the disagreement runs one way
This is worth printing rather than smoothing over.
An Imperial Brands study of its own ZoneX pouches — “All the authors were employed by Imperial Brands PLC either during part or all of the study. Skruf Snus A.B., Sweden, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Imperial Brands PLC and is the manufacturer of the two nicotine pouch products investigated in this study” — found that “Cigarette use resulted in the highest average Cmax recorded (11.6 ng/ml) and within the shortest time period (8.5 min)”, with both pouches, including a 10.1 mg one, coming in below that.
The BfR-funded study found the opposite at higher strength: “Consumption of 30 mg nicotine pouches has led to a higher nicotine uptake compared with the cigarette (Cmax: 29.4 vs 15.2 ng/mL; AUC: 45.7 vs 22.1 ng/mL × h).”
So: the two studies in which pouches land at or below cigarette peaks are the two paid for by pouch makers, and the two in which pouches exceed cigarette peaks are the independent one and the publicly funded one. I am not going to claim that proves anything about anyone’s conduct — study populations, products and protocols all differ, and the Imperial study held its pouches in for twenty minutes against the London study’s forty-five, which alone shifts the peak. But the pattern is there, it is consistent, and you should know which kind of study a number came from before you plan around it.
What the manufacturers themselves tell beginners
Two of the big brands do publish beginner guidance, and it is lower than most of their range.
ZYN: “New users often start with 3mg or 6mg pouches”, and its smaller format is “recommended for adult nicotine users who are new to nicotine pouches”, described as “a smooth, gentle nicotine experience with a lighter tingling sensation under the lip” (zyn.com and its mini-vs-regular page, both 27 July 2025).
VELO sorts its range into three named tiers, of which the lowest, “Mellow”, is “For new VELO users” and runs at 4 mg and 6 mg.
At the other end, the Killa and Pablo pages carry the inverse: “This tobacco-free product is mainly intended for experienced users as the nicotine content is very high!” and, uniquely among everything I read, an interval instruction — “Use no more than one sachet for 2 hours.”
Taking the brand owners at their word costs you nothing and is the only dosing guidance that exists. No manufacturer publishes a maximum number of pouches per day, an overdose threshold, or any relationship between milligrams and symptoms.
The strengths beginners are told to buy have never been studied
This is the gap I would most like closed, and I think it should temper how confidently anyone — including me — talks about first strengths.
ZYN’s beginner floor is 3 mg. VELO’s is 4 mg. The lowest strength in any pharmacokinetic study I could find is 4 mg, and the lowest in a properly reported one is Imperial’s 5.8 mg. There is no published measurement of what a 1.5 mg or 3 mg pouch does to blood nicotine in a person who has never used one. The advice to start at 3 mg is reasonable, it is what the makers say, and it is not evidence-based in the sense of resting on a measurement.
Nobody caps the dose, and the caps that exist are the wrong unit
If you are hoping regulation puts a floor under this, it mostly does not.
Poland enacted a cap in 2025: Art. 11hb(1)(1) of the amending act provides that “zawartość nikotyny w woreczku nikotynowym nie może przekraczać 20 mg/g” — nicotine content in a nicotine pouch may not exceed 20 mg per gram (Dz. U. 2025 poz. 799, published 20 June 2025). Finland sets 16.6 mg per gram and Iceland 20 mg per gram. All of these are concentration caps, and my own arithmetic on them is the point: at 20 mg/g, a 0.5 g pouch may lawfully hold 10 mg and a 0.8 g pouch 16 mg. The cap does not limit the dose; it limits the recipe.
Sweden, the one EU country where snus is legal, sets no nicotine limit at all. Its current regulation, LIVSFS 2024:2, in force since 1 April 2024, sets four limits — lead, aflatoxins, benzo(a)pyrene and the nitrosamines NNN and NNK — and no nicotine ceiling and no requirement to declare nicotine content on the label.
No jurisdiction I am aware of caps nicotine per pouch. For how this varies country by country, see the global regulation tracker.
How to read a ladder you have never seen before
The table below is brand-owner published figures only, with the basis stated where the brand states it and left blank where it does not. That blankness is the finding.
| Brand (owner) | Published ladder | Basis stated? | Pouch weight published? | Brand’s own beginner rung |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZYN (Swedish Match / PMI) | 1.5, 3, 6 mg (mini) · 9, 11, 13.5, 16.5 mg (regular) | No — mg only | No | 3 mg, or mini |
| VELO (BAT) | 4 to 17 mg | Yes — “per pouch” | No | 4 mg (“Mellow”) |
| Killa (via NGP Europe) | 16 mg/g = 12.8 mg per pouch, 0.8 g | Yes — both given | Yes, 0.8 g | None — “experienced users” |
| Pablo Exclusive (via NGP Europe) | “50mg” in the name = 50 mg/g = 30 mg per pouch, 0.6 g | Yes on the page, no in the name | Yes, 0.6 g | None — “experienced users” |
| Skruf White (Imperial, tobacco snus not pouches) | 12 mg/g = 11 mg per portion, 0.9 g | Yes — both given | Yes, 0.9 g | Not published |
Two things follow from the right-hand columns. If a page gives you both a per-gram figure and a pouch weight, you can check it yourself and the arithmetic should close — 12 × 0.9 = 10.8, and Skruf prints 11 mg per portion, which closes. If a page gives you a bare milligram number and no weight, you cannot check anything, and the only safe reading is that it ranks products within that brand and nothing more. I have compared the ladders side by side in every brand’s strength scale, and pulled apart the marketing words in what “extra strong” actually means.
What too much feels like, and when to take the pouch out
You should know the signs before you need them, because the first one arrives fast.
BfR describes the sequence: “Mild symptoms of intoxication include nausea and vomiting, with symptoms from higher levels of exposure including diarrhoea, increased salivation and a slowing of the heart rate.” Of reported cases from pouch use, “Most of the symptoms reported involved nausea/vomiting and cold sweats.”
The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is blunter on the leading sign: “Vomiting is the most common symptom of nicotine poisoning”, and at low concentrations nicotine “causes tremor and increases in heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and level of alertness” (CDC/NIOSH, last reviewed 12 May 2011 — an old page, and not pouch-specific).
In the London study the subject who felt worst took the pouch out after three minutes and that was the right call. Nothing is gained by leaving it in. If you feel sick, dizzy or clammy, remove it, and next time buy a lower rung.
What I would actually do
Buy the lowest strength the brand sells. Keep it in for a short time the first few times rather than the full thirty minutes the brands suggest — I have written about the timing separately in how long to keep your first pouch in and about placement in where exactly to put your first pouch. Stay with one brand until you know its ladder, because moving between brands at “the same mg” is not moving at the same dose. And if you are a light or occasional smoker, assume the mid-range products are too strong for you, because in the one study that measured it, they were.
If you want the full numerical picture rather than the beginner’s slice of it, that lives in nicotine pouch strengths: the complete mg guide. If you want to know which products are worth buying at all once you have settled on a strength, that is the master ranking.
Frequently asked questions
Is a 6 mg pouch half the strength of a 12 mg pouch?
Within one brand’s own range, roughly, as a ranking. Across brands, no — you do not know whether either figure is per pouch or per gram, and you do not know what fraction each product releases. The BfR-funded measurements found a pouch declared 20 mg released 4.7 mg, which is not a fixed proportion you can apply elsewhere.
I smoke 20 a day. Can I start in the middle of the range?
You can, but the independent study used a 9 mg pouch on smokers averaging ten a day and still recorded nausea in three of twenty and one vomiting. Peak blood nicotine from that pouch exceeded a cigarette’s. I would start low and move up, which costs you one tin.
Does a stronger pouch work faster?
Not usefully. In the independent study nicotine reached 13 ng/ml within ten minutes and peaked at thirty, against six minutes for a cigarette. Strength changes how much, not how quickly — and in-vitro work found that how fast nicotine leaves the pouch varies by product rather than tracking its strength.
Are there legal limits that stop a pouch being dangerously strong?
Nothing that caps the dose. Poland, Finland and Iceland cap concentration per gram, so a heavier pouch can legally carry more nicotine at the same cap. Sweden caps contaminants, not nicotine. The World Health Organization has called for “caps on the amount of nicotine allowed” and noted products “labelled at up to 150 mg”.
Why do different sources give different peak nicotine figures for pouches?
Partly because the protocols differ — a pouch held for twenty minutes peaks earlier and lower than one held for forty-five — and partly, as far as I can tell, because of who paid. The studies showing pouches below cigarette peaks were funded by pouch manufacturers; the independent and publicly funded ones show pouches above.
Sources
- Mallock-Ohnesorg N et al., “Small pouches, but high nicotine doses—nicotine delivery and acute effects after use of tobacco-free nicotine pouches”, Frontiers in Pharmacology, 22 May 2024, doi 10.3389/fphar.2024.1392027. Funded by intramural BfR funding, grant No. BfR-CPS-08-60-0102-02.P606; authors declare no commercial or financial relationships. Full text
- Przulj D, Myers Smith K, McRobbie H, Pesola F, Ananina I, Ladmore D, Hajek P, “Nicotine delivery from and user reactions to nicotine pouches compared to cigarettes”, Psychopharmacology, 12 December 2025, doi 10.1007/s00213-025-06961-1. Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London. Funding: “N/A, the study was funded by internal funds”; no competing interests declared. Full text
- Chapman F et al., “A randomised, open-label, cross-over clinical study to evaluate the pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic and safety and tolerability profiles of tobacco-free oral nicotine pouches relative to cigarettes”, Psychopharmacology, 23 June 2022, doi 10.1007/s00213-022-06178-6. Funded by Imperial Brands PLC; all authors employed by Imperial Brands; Skruf Snus A.B. manufactured the products studied. Full text
- Lunell E, Fagerström K, Hughes J, Pendrill R, “Pharmacokinetic Comparison of a Novel Non-tobacco-Based Nicotine Pouch (ZYN) With Conventional, Tobacco-Based Swedish Snus and American Moist Snuff”, Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2020, doi 10.1093/ntr/ntaa068. Funded by Swedish Match AB; one author a Swedish Match employee.
- Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung, “Health risk assessment of nicotine pouches”, Updated BfR Opinion no. 023/2022, 7 October 2022. PDF
- CDC / NIOSH, “Nicotine: Systemic Agent”, Emergency Response Safety and Health Database, last reviewed 12 May 2011. Page
- Ustawa z dnia 21 maja 2025 r. o zmianie ustawy o ochronie zdrowia przed następstwami używania tytoniu i wyrobów tytoniowych, Dz. U. 2025 poz. 799, published 20 June 2025, Art. 11hb. Official text (PDF)
- Livsmedelsverkets föreskrifter om snus, snusliknande produkter och tuggtobak, LIVSFS 2024:2, decided 16 February 2024, in force 1 April 2024, § 8. PDF
- Grilo G et al., “Global Regulatory Scenario of Nicotine Pouches”, Institute for Global Tobacco Control, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, 6 October 2025. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use. PDF
- Brand-owner pages, read 1 October 2026: ZYN strengths and mg levels (27 July 2025); ZYN mini vs regular (27 July 2025); VELO our products; Pablo Exclusive 50mg Frosted Ice; Killa Cold Mint; Skruf Original White (modified 27 February 2026).
What I could not establish: there is no published pharmacokinetic study of a 1.5 mg or 3 mg pouch, which is to say no measurement exists of the strengths manufacturers recommend to beginners. No source converts a labelled milligram figure into an expected absorbed dose for a named product. The acute reference dose for nicotine of 0.0008 mg/kg bodyweight is quoted here only as BfR citing EFSA, because every EFSA route to the 2009 original returned an error. Last verified 1 October 2026.