From the November 2024 issue of Report on Business
Blowing Smoke
Big Tobacco says it wants to phase out its most popular product, the cigarette. Are its latest innovations an honest attempt to diversify—or a way to hook a whole new generation on nicotine?
This time last year, they hit the shelves of convenience stores and gas stations across Canada: brightly coloured plastic cylinders, roughly the size and shape of hockey pucks, bearing the brand name Zonnic. Inside every one of these $12 containers were 24 small white pouches packed with nicotine. There were three flavours on offer—chill mint, berry frost and tropic breeze—and, as ads for these sachets explained, you were supposed to pop one in your mouth, tuck it under your upper lip and wait for an icy jolt of nicotine to seep into your gums.
Stores stocked Zonnic behind the counter, next to the cigarettes and vapes. But unlike cigarettes, most of which are individually emblazoned with pithy admonishments like POISON IN EVERY PUFF, and unlike vapes, which are sold in boxes that alert customers to the highly addictive nature of nicotine, Zonnic cans didn’t explicitly caution customers about, well, anything.
Continue reading in Report on Business