Influencers rebrand nicotine as wellness aid, despite addiction risks

Nicotine is being recast online as a clean, modern fix for focus, energy and productivity, even though federal health agencies still describe it as highly addictive and unsafe. Health influencers aligned with the Make America Healthy Again Movement are promoting pouches, patches, gums, lozenges and even drinks as tools for “stacks” and cognitive performance, a framing that is now spilling from social media into wellness startups and broader consumer marketing.

The appeal is straightforward: nicotine is being presented less as a tobacco drug and more as a lifestyle enhancer. Influencers such as Alex Clark and Byran Ardis have helped push the idea that the medical establishment unfairly demonized the compound, while public-health experts warn that the rebrand can make a dependency-forming substance seem benign or therapeutic. That shift matters because nicotine is not a neutral nootropic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are no safe tobacco products, including nicotine pouches, and that nicotine is highly addictive.

The market has moved quickly. Nicotine pouches entered the United States in 2016, and their rise has been accompanied by a wave of new tobacco and nicotine products marketed to adults seeking an alternative to cigarettes. Yet a 2025 review found that use of these products is rising, especially among adolescents and young adults, while evidence on long-term health effects remains limited. That gap has become part of the problem: products are spreading faster than the science can fully map their harms.

Youth data show why medical groups are alarmed. In 2024, 2.25 million middle and high school students reported current use of any tobacco product, and 1.8% reported nicotine pouch use. E-cigarettes remained the most used tobacco product among U.S. students at 5.9%. Public-health advocates say packaging nicotine as a wellness aid risks normalizing use among nonsmokers and younger users, particularly when the messaging emphasizes being “natural,” “clean” or “modern” rather than addictive.

Cardiologists are also pressing the warning. The American Heart Association issued a policy statement on smokeless oral nicotine products on January 7, 2025, reflecting how fast the category has evolved. The statement warned that nicotine-containing products pose cardiovascular risks regardless of delivery system, and that the rapid uptake of synthetic nicotine pouches, especially among youth, could reverse decades of progress in tobacco control. What began as an online wellness trend is now colliding with a familiar public-health truth: nicotine may be newly packaged, but its addictive pull has not changed.