The R Street Institute has come out swinging against France’s decision to outlaw oral nicotine products, calling the move a textbook example of harm-reduction policy aimed in the wrong direction. In a commentary published June 5, 2026 by analyst Jeffrey S. Smith and titled “Let Them Eat Cake”: Harm Reduction Edition, the libertarian-leaning think tank argues that France is criminalizing one of the safer nicotine products on the market while leaving cigarettes fully legal — an inversion of the very logic that built the country’s recent public-health gains. cstoredecisions
The ban itself is severe. France has prohibited the sales, use, possession, import and distribution of all oral nicotine products, with violations carrying penalties of up to five years in prison and fines as high as 375,000 euros. R Street notes the irony of the timing. France has been winning its war on smoking by almost any measure: daily smoking among adults aged 18 to 75 has fallen from roughly 30% in 2000 to a historic low of 18.2% in 2024, with roughly four million fewer daily smokers than in 2014. The government’s stated target is a smoke-free generation, with youth smoking below 10% by 2032.
Reduced-risk products played a meaningful role in that progress. R Street points to 2024 data showing 8.4% of French adults vaped, 6.5% did so daily, and 97% of vapers were current or former smokers. Nearly half reported quitting cigarettes through vaping. France notably rejected a proposed vape tax in early 2026, keeping e-liquids accessible — a policy R Street describes as harm reduction working as designed: tax combustion heavily, leave safer alternatives accessible.
The think tank then walks through why pouches don’t belong on the wrong side of that line. Citing chemical analysis, R Street notes that leading pouch brands contain no detectable tobacco-specific nitrosamines or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, putting their toxicant profile in the same range as pharmaceutical nicotine replacement therapy and far below moist snuff. Pharmacokinetic research has shown that a 4-milligram pouch delivers nicotine comparably to a 4-milligram lozenge, with better tolerability. The cessation evidence base is still maturing — the Cochrane review remains in protocol form — but by every existing toxicological measure, pouches are vastly less harmful than the cigarettes they could replace.
R Street acknowledges the youth-safety concern but argues France has overweighted it. France’s food and environmental safety agency recorded roughly 90 poison-center calls regarding nicotine pouches in 2023 and 2024, with 54% involving adolescents aged 12 to 17, resulting in 11 severe cases. Smith argues those incidents deserve a policy response, but notes they reflect failures of marketing and age controls, not the product itself — and France’s own surveys found no meaningful standalone pouch prevalence among youth, who overwhelmingly preferred disposable vapes.
The harder critique is structural. R Street argues that banning a safer product while leaving cigarettes on shelves doesn’t reduce harm; it redirects it. Adult smokers who might have switched to pouches now face two legal options: keep smoking, or do without. France leaves combustible tobacco fully legal and merely taxes it. It leaves vaping untaxed. Then it threatens pouch users with prison. The risk signal, Smith writes, is exactly backward.
The piece also flags enforcement complications. The Conseil d’État has already suspended the ban’s manufacturing and export provisions pending a full ruling, and R Street warns that a ban without genuine supply control will hand demand to an unregulated gray market with no age verification, no quality standards, and no nicotine-content limits. Smoke Free Sweden, which represents a country where roughly 6% of adults use pouches daily and which records Europe’s lowest smoking rates, has publicly objected that the ban will turn Swedish travelers into criminals.
R Street’s proposed alternative is the regulatory toolkit France already applies to vaping: a strict age limit with retailer enforcement, a cap on nicotine content per pouch, child-resistant packaging, plain or restricted labeling, and a firm ban on the youth-oriented social media marketing that drove the poisoning cases in the first place. The argument is that this risk-proportionate framework protects children without stranding adult smokers looking for a way out of combustion.
The commentary closes with the Marie Antoinette flourish the title sets up. A country celebrating record-low smoking, R Street argues, is about to criminalize a product that could push those numbers lower still — and good public health policy follows the evidence on relative risk, which France on pouches has chosen to ignore. The disconnection between citizens and rulers didn’t end well for the queen, Smith writes, and on the pouch ban, it is French citizens who are most likely to pay.
