Strengths

Why two 6mg pouches from different brands feel completely different

by Jose Del Pozo October 16, 2026 15 min read

Because the number on the can describes what went into the pouch, not what reaches you — and no regulator anywhere requires it to be accurate. Two cans both marked 6 mg can differ in measured nicotine, in how fast that nicotine leaves the pouch, in pH, and in what the filler is actually made of. The only study to test two 6 mg pouches side by side found one releasing 96% of its nicotine in an hour and the other 72%.

If you have moved between brands at the same stated strength and found one sharp and fast and the other flat and slow, the measurements agree with you. In January 2026 a laboratory published the first full physical characterisation of seven pouch products, and two of them — ZYN Cool Mint and Rogue Spearmint — were both labelled 6 mg. Almost nothing else about them matched. I have flagged the funding on every study below, because on this topic it matters: the best dataset in existence was paid for by a company that sells a competing product.

The one study that put two 6 mg pouches on the same bench

Platt and colleagues, Scientific Reports 16:4406, published 6 January 2026, ran seven pouch products through nicotine quantification, dissolution, particle sizing, density, thermal analysis and elemental analysis. Their stated selection rule was deliberately narrow: “To be consistent, all products were mint flavored with nicotine levels between 6 and 9.4 mg per pouch based on the can label.”

The funding, in full, because it shapes how you should read the rankings: “This research was funded by Altria Client Services LLC, an affiliate of Helix Innovations LLC, the manufacturer of on! nicotine pouches. Altria Ventures Inc., also an affiliate of ALCS, has signed a definitive agreement with Korea Tobacco & Ginseng Corporation (KT&G), whereby, concurrent with KT&G’s acquisition of Another Snus Factory Stockholm AB (ASF), the owner of the Loop brand of nicotine pouches, an Altria subsidiary will acquire an ownership interest in ASF.” All eight authors were Altria employees at the time. The reference product against which everything else was measured was Altria’s own on!, and the product that finished last on every release metric was Loop, in which Altria is acquiring an interest — both ends of the ranking are disclosed interests. I still think it is the best data available, because it is the only data of its kind and the methods are stated in enough detail to be criticised. Read the rank order with that in mind, and note that no independent laboratory has replicated the matched-pair comparison.

Here is the matched pair, from the paper’s own tables. Both cans say 6 mg.

Measured property	ZYN Cool Mint 6 mg	Rogue Spearmint 6 mg
Pouch weight (n=12)	0.38 ± 0.002 g	0.69 ± 0.043 g
Measured nicotine (n=3)	5.4 ± 0.03 mg (90% of label)	6.2 ± 0.01 mg (103% of label)
Nicotine released in 60 min	96 ± 2%	72 ± 5%
Fitted release rate constant k	0.103 min⁻¹	0.078 min⁻¹
pH of aqueous extract	7.62 ± 0.01	7.43 ± 0.17
Moisture (oven volatiles)	3.52 ± 0.08%	14.70 ± 0.14%
Soluble fraction of filler	78.26 ± 0.77%	41.21 ± 0.35%
Packed filler void space	63.2%	38.6%
Filler melting point / enthalpy	150.52 °C / 67.4 J·g⁻¹	102.51 °C / 200.94 J·g⁻¹
Elements detected beyond C, O, Na	K 0.11%	Si 4.59%, Cl 1.89%

Read the last three rows again. A 48 °C difference in melting point and a threefold difference in melting enthalpy do not describe two versions of the same material, and neither does silicon at 4.59% in one and none detected in the other. These two cans do not contain the same substance with a different flavour on top.

The label number is not a promise, and nobody has made it one

Start with how badly the stated figure can miss. Platt writes: “the calculated nicotine content for Velo and Dryft (both labeled as 7 mg) was significantly lower than the target, measuring 4.6 mg/pouch and 5.7 mg/pouch, respectively.” Velo at 4.6 mg against a 7 mg label is 66% of its stated strength.

Independent measurements land in the same territory. The Dutch RIVM tested eleven packs and found nicotine present at 64–91% of the declared concentration, with its own caveat that the method was unvalidated. Germany’s BfR-funded clinical study, which analysed the products it dosed, reported that “the pouches only contained between 80% and 90% of the declared nicotine content.”

I went looking for a tolerance — any rule, anywhere, requiring the mg figure to be within some margin of the truth — and there isn’t one:

The EU does not reach pouches at all. Directive 2014/40/EU defines “tobacco products” as “products that can be consumed and consist, even partly, of tobacco, whether genetically modified or not”. A tobacco-free pouch is outside the definition and therefore outside the Directive. The contrast is pointed: for cigarettes, Article 4 requires that “accuracy of the tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide measurements shall be determined in accordance with ISO standard 8243” by laboratories which “shall not be owned or controlled directly or indirectly by the tobacco industry”; for e-cigarettes, Article 20(3)(f) requires that they “deliver the nicotine doses at consistent levels under normal conditions of use”. Pouches get neither.
The UK has taken the power and not used it. The Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 brings nicotine products into scope, and sections 96, 97 and 103 let the Secretary of State make regulations about what a product may contain, what it may release, and how it is tested. Those are powers, not requirements: across 198 pages the words “tolerance” and “nicotine content” do not appear at all, and I have identified no regulations made under them.
Sweden compels the number without defining it. Lag (2022:1257) requires that packs of tobacco-free nicotine products “ska förses med en innehållsdeklaration och en text som upplyser om nikotinets skadeverkningar (hälsovarning)”, and the implementing ordinance requires “uppgift om innehåll av nikotin i produkten och fördelning per dos”. No unit is prescribed, no reference method, no accuracy standard.
The United States accepts the manufacturer’s own target. Every numeric limit in FDA’s two published pouch reviews is the applicant’s own specification, which FDA reviews for internal consistency. The point is made most sharply by what FDA did when the numbers missed: in the ZYN review, “nicotine quantity in half of the samples of the new products was lower than the target quantity of nicotine (approximately 4.5 mg rather than the 6.0 mg target specification)”. FDA’s own chemistry reviewers asked for verification — “The chemistry review recommended FDA independently verify nicotine content and pH of the new products due to this discrepancy” — and the project lead declined: “this discrepancy in nicotine content does not warrant FDA verification testing of nicotine content and pH of the new products.”

So a 25% shortfall against a 6 mg target, in a study submitted to the regulator, triggered no measurement by anyone outside the company. That is the floor the number on your can sits on.

How fast it leaves the pouch: the difference you actually feel first

Content is only the starting pool. What matters is how much comes out while the pouch is in your lip, and here the two 6 mg products diverge sharply: ZYN released 96 ± 2% of its nicotine in sixty minutes, Rogue 72 ± 5%. Fitted to a first-order model, ZYN had the highest rate constant of all seven products at 0.103 min⁻¹ against Rogue’s 0.078 — roughly a third faster.

Platt then did something unusual and useful: he applied the pharmaceutical test for whether two dissolution curves are interchangeable. The criterion is FDA’s own: “Generally, f₁ values up to 15 (0–15) and f₂ values of 50 or greater (50–100) demonstrate equivalency of the two curves.” Against on! as reference, the verdict was “Only Zyn and Rogue pouches were found to be equivalent to on!. All other pouches were found to be different than on! nicotine pouches.” Four of six products failed a formal equivalence test, and Velo failed on f₂ by 2.7 points while passing f₁.

That finding has independent support. BfR ran its own release experiments on fifteen pouches: “In four out of 15 samples, more than 70% of the total nicotine content was released in the first 5 minutes. In contrast, seven other samples released less than 60% of the nicotine they contained within the first 10 minutes.” It did not name the products, which is the limitation — but it is a non-industry laboratory finding the same spread, and its practical conclusion is that “most of the nicotine is released within the first 20 minutes.”

How much of it crosses your mucosa: pH, and why it is a separate question

This is where most explanations get muddled. Release and absorption are two different mechanisms, and Platt states the separation about as clearly as anyone has:

“While pH does not influence the release of nicotine from the pouch, it can affect absorption in the oral cavity. Higher pH levels increase the proportion of nicotine in its free (unprotonated) form, which is more readily absorbed through the oral mucosa, potentially leading to a faster onset of effects.”

The chemistry is not contested. FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products set it out in a 2016 memorandum — headed, note, as “then-current thinking” and “not binding on FDA or the public” — that “Free-base nicotine, which is the most volatile form, is also the most soluble form and the most rapidly absorbed form of nicotine across all mucosal boundaries”, and that “The conversion of mono-protonated nicotine to the free-base form occurs at the pKa of about 8.02.” BfR gives the constant as 8.0 and the consequence: at blood pH 7.4 nicotine sits roughly 69% charged and 31% free-base, and “Nicotine can only pass through cell membranes in the nonionic state.”

Because pouch pH sits close to that pKa, small pH differences move the free fraction a long way. BfR measured 44 pouches, found a median pH of 8.8, applied the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation and reported that “The median proportion of free-base nicotine was 86%”. The US CDC went wider, and the spread is the most striking number in this whole subject. As BfR restates it: “The CDC study on 37 brands identified a pH range from 6.94 to 10.1, which was converted into free-base nicotine proportions of 7.7% to 99.2%.”

A thirteenfold range in the bioavailable fraction, across products sold interchangeably on the same shelf. Nothing on any can tells you where in that range yours sits.

How much difference does that make at the mucosa? The only quantified answer I could find is from Altria’s own laboratory, presented at the 2025 Tobacco Science Research Conference and therefore not peer-reviewed. Using porcine oral membrane and a neat nicotine solution, apparent permeability rose from 11.00 × 10⁻⁶ cm·s⁻¹ at pH 5.0 to 12.40 at pH 6.8, 35.32 at pH 8.5 and 55.60 at pH 10.0 — a factor of about 2.8 across the window that separates a pH-7.4 pouch from a pH-9 one. Treat that as indicative, from an interested party, in pigs.

Note the awkward implication for our two 6 mg products: ZYN and Rogue have the lowest pH values in the set (7.62 and 7.43, against on! at 8.62 and Velo at 8.98) and were among the fastest releasers. Platt says it himself — those effects “are separate from dissolution profiles”. I have gone deeper on this in pouch pH and why it changes the hit and nicotine salts vs freebase nicotine in pouches.

The variables that explain the difference are the ones nobody controls

This is the part I find hardest to defend on the industry’s behalf. The two measured properties that differ most between the 6 mg products are moisture and particle size: ZYN’s filler is 3.52% moisture with a volume-weighted median particle of 352 µm, Rogue’s 14.70% moisture with a count-weighted median grain roughly a fifth the size. Both are plausible drivers of a different release curve and a different mouthfeel.

And in FDA’s review of on! PLUS, the applicant said of those same two parameters that it “did not provide target specifications and lower range limit for moisture content and particle size distribution for the new products and indicated that these are not routine design parameters for product characterization.” FDA accepted that. The two things most likely to explain why two pouches feel different are, on the maker’s own account, not routinely specified.

FDA does track the bag — “pouch material basis weight, and pouch material porosity” are in scope — and Platt measured fabric pore sizes from 49.2 µm (on!) to 104.8 µm (Volt). But Rogue’s pouch has slightly larger pores than ZYN’s and releases far less, so the fabric is not the bottleneck. Platt’s verdict on the physical correlations is honest: the results “show the challenges in observing a direct relationship between the particle size distribution of the nicotine pouch products and the dissolution release rate due to other factors that could impact dissolution”, and on pH, “No clear trend was observed between pH and nicotine content, solubility, or moisture content.”

Nobody even measures release the same way

If you are wondering why the industry can’t simply publish comparable numbers: there is no agreed method. CORESTA, which writes the analytical standards this sector uses, has recommended methods for nicotine (CRM 62), pH (CRM 69) and moisture (CRM 76) — all titled for “Tobacco and Tobacco Products” — and none for release. Platt, needing one, used FDA’s guidance for immediate-release oral drug products with artificial saliva made to a German standard whose actual subject is whether dye runs out of articles in common use.

The two methods the largest manufacturers favour disagree substantially. A Swedish Match-affiliated group built its own low-volume method precisely because “As no standardized method is available for this purpose, this study sought to develop a biorelevant dissolution method that could both discriminate between different products and predict in vivo behavior”, finding of the existing approaches that “common for these methods is that they all seem to substantially overpredict the nicotine release in vivo”.

And FDA, reviewing ZYN’s application, set the applicant’s release data aside: “The chemistry consult concluded that it is unclear whether the nicotine dissolution method used by the applicant can precisely measure nicotine release from the new products”, and the behavioural reviewer “did not rely on the nicotine dissolution data to estimate nicotine exposure, an important component of abuse liability, because the applicant’s method was unable to measure nicotine release repeatably and reliably.” ZYN was authorised for sale in the United States with its own nicotine-release data formally discounted.

What to do with this, practically

Treat a brand change as a new product, not a new flavour. Moving from one 6 mg to another, assume you do not know what it will do and give the first one a short hold. The variation between brands at the same label is larger than the variation between adjacent tiers within a brand. The same warning applies with more force if you are arriving from snus, where the extraction fraction is different again: see your first pouch if you’ve used snus before.

Hold time is probably your biggest lever, bigger than the number on the can. The hold times in the primary literature run from 20 minutes (BfR’s clinical study) to 30 (BfR’s general advice), 45 (the regimen FDA accepted for on! PLUS) and 60 (Platt’s assay, and the main pharmacokinetic study behind the figures above). Extraction moves with it: around 38% at twenty minutes in the independent study, 56–59% at sixty in the manufacturer-funded one. The makers now converge on about half an hour — ZYN UK says “we recommend using the pouch for up to 30 minutes”, VELO that it “recommends keeping a pouch in place for around 30 minutes” — while FDA’s own data on real users found “80.7% reporting using the product >60 minutes always or sometimes”. If a pouch is too much, take it out sooner. That is a dial you control; the mg figure is not. The full timing picture — when a pouch peaks, how long it keeps delivering and how long nicotine stays in you — is in nicotine pouch absorption: how fast it hits and how long it lasts.

Don’t read pouch weight as strength. Rogue’s 6 mg pouch is nearly twice the weight of ZYN’s, and within a single brand it can run the other way: FDA’s filings put regular on! Mint 8 mg at 0.25 g and on! PLUS 6 mg at 0.714 g, so the same company’s lower-strength pouch is nearly three times the mass. BfR found four products from one manufacturer at an identical 0.7 g weight spanning 4.06 to 11.9 mg of nicotine.

Be sceptical of words, not just numbers. BfR’s labelling survey is the most useful passage on this: “Nicotine content, expressed as mg per pouch or per g, was declared clearly on only about a third of the nicotine pouches examined”, and “Switching between products from different manufacturers can result in nicotine content per pouch doubling even though the nicotine strength of these products is described using the same terms.” The descriptors above “extra strong” — “ultra”, “extreme”, “brutal” — covered products from 12.1 to 47.5 mg per pouch. The unit problem is the subject of mg per pouch vs mg per gram; the brand-by-brand scales are in every brand’s strength scale, compared side by side.

What I could not establish

Three gaps, because the absence of evidence is part of the answer.

No primary source publishes a free-nicotine figure for any specific named 6 mg product. CDC has published the range across 37 brands and BfR the median across 44, and FDA treats free nicotine as part of its “primary bridging criteria” alongside total nicotine and lists it as a harmful constituent — yet FDA publishes no absolute value and no pH for any authorised pouch, only relative changes against a snus comparator. Platt measured the pH of both 6 mg products and did not do the arithmetic. I cannot tell you what fraction of your pouch is free-base, and neither can anyone else.

There is no numeric release time-course in the public record. Platt sampled at 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 minutes across twelve replicates of seven products, publishing the curves as figures and the fitted constants as numbers. The per-time-point values exist only on request from the authors.

Platt is unreplicated. No independent laboratory has published nicotine content, release, pH and moisture for two brands at the same declared mg per pouch. Several candidate papers exist; every one I could identify is affiliated with a manufacturer.

FAQ

Is one of these two 6 mg pouches “stronger”? On measured content, Rogue — 6.2 mg against ZYN’s 5.4 mg. On nicotine actually released in an hour, ZYN, comfortably: 96% of 5.4 mg is about 5.2 mg, against 72% of 6.2 mg, about 4.5 mg. That inversion is the whole article in two sums, and it is why I won’t answer this one in a single word.

Does a higher pH mean a stronger pouch? It means a larger share of the nicotine is in the form that crosses your mucosa most readily, which plausibly means faster onset. It does not mean more nicotine, and it does not predict how fast nicotine leaves the pouch — the two lowest-pH products in Platt’s set were among the fastest releasers.

Why don’t brands publish pouch weight and pH? Nothing obliges them to. Of the maker sites I could reach, none published a per-pouch weight, a pouch dimension or a nicotine source. The only place a 6 mg pouch is fully specified in public is an FDA review of a competitor’s application.

Is the variation within a can as well as between brands? Yes. RIVM weighed ten pouches from a single can and got 647.9 to 787.0 mg — a spread of about 19% of the mean — and reported an average within-brand weight margin of 18%. Even CORESTA’s purpose-built reference pouches carry ±6.0% and ±7.3% on weight.

So is the number on the can useless? No. Within one brand and one format it tracks dose reasonably well, and it is the only comparative information you are given. It is simply not a measurement of what you will absorb, and nobody audits it.

Sources

Platt SP, Grimm CM, Patel P, et al. Dissolution and physical characterization of oral nicotine pouch products. Scientific Reports 16:4406, 6 January 2026. Funded by Altria Client Services LLC; all authors Altria employees at the time of the study. Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.
Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung. Health risk assessment of nicotine pouches, updated BfR Opinion no. 023/2022, 7 October 2022. German federal risk-assessment institute; no industry funding.
RIVM. Nicotineproducten zonder tabak voor recreatief gebruik, briefrapport 2020-0152. Dutch national institute; Table B4.1 and B4.2.
FDA Center for Tobacco Products. Technical Project Lead review of PMTAs PM0000593–PM0000612 (ZYN), signed 14 January 2025.
FDA Center for Tobacco Products. Technical Project Lead review of nicotine pouch PMTAs (on! PLUS, Helix Innovations).
Cecil TL. Dissolution as a Critical Comparison of Smokeless Product Performance, FDA CTP Office of Science memorandum, 2 May 2016. Explicitly “not binding on FDA or the public”.
Knopp MM, Kiil-Nielsen NK, Masser AE, Staaf M. Introducing a Novel Biorelevant In Vitro Dissolution Method. Separations 2022, 9, 52. Two authors employed by Swedish Match North Europe AB.
CORESTA Tobacco and Tobacco Products Analytes Sub-Group. Nicotine Pouch Reference Products Homogeneity Assessment, TTPA-372-1, February 2025. Authors from Swedish Match North Europe and Altria Client Services.
Directive 2014/40/EU, Articles 2, 4, 17 and 20.
Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 c. 18, Part 5 and section 117.
Lag (2022:1257) om tobaksfria nikotinprodukter and Förordning (2022:1263).
Li X, Sriram A. Evaluation of Factors Impacting Nicotine Permeation from Oral Pouch Products, 78th Tobacco Science Research Conference, September 2025. Altria Client Services; conference presentation, not peer-reviewed.
ZYN UK on pouch duration and VELO UK on how to use a pouch, both read 16 October 2026. Manufacturer pages; these change, and the figures above are dated accordingly.

Last verified 16 October 2026.