New Mexico legislators are considering higher taxes and new restrictions on nicotine products such as nicotine pouches. These proposals are typically framed as public-health measures. In practice, they risk doing precisely the opposite—nudging smokers back toward cigarettes, expanding illicit markets, and increasing preventable disease.
Cigarettes remain the most dangerous nicotine product legally sold in the United States. The reason is not nicotine itself, but combustion. Burning tobacco produces the toxic chemicals responsible for lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and the vast majority of smoking-related deaths. That reality is not controversial. It is why public-health efforts for decades have focused on getting people to stop smoking combustible cigarettes.
What has changed is the availability of safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches, like earlier generations of vaping products, deliver nicotine without combustion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized several pouch products after determining they are “appropriate for the protection of public health,” explicitly recognizing that they expose users to far fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes. That designation matters. It reflects a growing consensus that reducing exposure to combustion saves lives, even when nicotine use continues.
International experience strongly supports this approach. Sweden now has the lowest smoking rates and lowest smoking-related disease rates in the European Union—not because Swedes eliminated nicotine use, but because millions switched from cigarettes to snus, a smokeless pouch-style product. Over time, lung cancer rates and smoking-related mortality fell sharply. That outcome did not occur by accident; it occurred because policy allowed smokers to substitute away from the most dangerous product.
U.S. research points in the same direction. Studies from Yale, NYU, Rutgers, and the University of Missouri consistently find that non-combustible nicotine products help adult smokers reduce or quit cigarette use. These benefits are particularly pronounced among low-income populations, where smoking rates remain high and smoking-related illness is most concentrated.
The research also shows what happens when policymakers intervene in the wrong direction. When flavored vaping products are banned, youth cigarette smoking increases. When reduced-risk nicotine products are heavily taxed, price-sensitive smokers often revert to cheaper cigarettes. Policies intended to punish nicotine use can end up reinforcing the dominance of the deadliest product in the category.
Demand for nicotine does not disappear when lawmakers impose bans or punitive taxes. It moves. Restricting legal, in-store sales creates an opening for online sellers and social-media influencers who operate beyond the reach of state regulators. New Mexico should not assume it can effectively police national online brands that lack a physical presence in the state.
Other states offer cautionary examples. Colorado voters recently upheld a ban on flavored nicotine products, yet prominent online sellers continue shipping those same products into Denver. Online marketers like Freezer Tarps have previously been exposed for pushing nicotine products to minors regardless of state or local prohibitions. The effect is predictable: sales migrate out of regulated convenience stores—where ID checks are routine—and into an online gray market where enforcement is weak and age verification is easily bypassed.
New Mexico already faces serious public-health challenges, particularly in rural and low-income communities. Driving smokers back to cigarettes would only deepen those disparities and increase long-term costs through higher Medicaid spending, uncompensated care, and avoidable chronic disease.
None of this is an argument that nicotine pouches are harmless or that they should be accessible to minors. Nicotine is addictive, and age restrictions matter. New Mexico already requires ID checks for tobacco sales, and brick-and-mortar retailers enforce them daily. Adults are routinely carded, regardless of age.
The real policy question is not whether nicotine is virtuous. It is whether lawmakers want to help smokers move down the risk continuum—or force them back up it.
A rational public-health strategy aligns regulation and taxation with relative harm: the highest taxes on cigarettes, lower taxes on reduced-risk alternatives. It keeps safer products in regulated retail environments rather than pushing them underground or online. And it directs enforcement toward preventing underage access, not penalizing adults trying to avoid smoking-related disease.
New Mexico can choose an evidence-based path that reduces harm—or it can repeat mistakes other states are already struggling to undo.