Eloïse Trenda
Research Expert covering global food topics with a focus on the French and Spanish markets.
Smokeless tobacco in the U.S. - Statistics & Facts
Smokeless tobacco has been around for a long time in different forms. Some, like chew and dip, are closely tied to American nostalgia of cowboys and baseball players. Today, smokeless tobacco products are positioning themselves as less harmful alternatives to combustible forms of tobacco. One of the most recent iterations of this is nicotine pouches. Like snus but containing flavored nicotine powder and no tobacco, nicotine pouches have been growing in growing in popularity.
Market landscape
Convenience stores are, by far, the most common place to purchase smokeless tobacco products within the United States. In 2022, U.S. convenience stores generated approximately 8.9 billion U.S. dollars from chewing tobacco and snuff products; which amounted to about 1.4 billion units sold. This variety of smokeless tobacco accounts for nearly the entire market. Meanwhile, manufacturer sales of smokeless tobacco have been growing. From 2.13 billion U.S. dollars in 2001, sales grew 133 percent to 4.96 billion dollars in 2021.Consumption
Consumption of smokeless tobacco is most common in the southern and midwest regions of the United States, which are the regions with the highest tobacco consumption generally. Men were about 21 times more likely than women to be consumers of smokeless tobacco. For nicotine pouches in particular, the largest share of consumers were between the ages of 35 and 54. Zyn, a nicotine pouch brand offered by Swedish Match, is the most popular nicotine pouch brand in the world with sales of 3.3 billion units.
