What legal category does a tobacco-free nicotine pouch fall under?
The case of nicotine pouches helps explain how substance-use policy can face challenges when new forms of consumption and new modes of access emerge faster than the legal and institutional frameworks designed to regulate them. Should a more adaptive public-health and community-based policy framework complement stronger enforcement?
What legal category does a tobacco-free nicotine pouch falls under? (Representational image generated using AI) India recently unveiled a three-year roadmap and a vision document for narcotics control, with an aim to achieve a “drug-free India” by 2029. The ‘four-pillar’ roadmap vision document includes intelligence and operation-based enforcement, precursor and synthetic drugs control, demand and harm reduction, and capacity building and coordination.
The vision document hints at the changing nature of drug challenge, but an important question remains whether India’s existing regulatory approach is adequate enough to deal with newer forms of nicotine use and related products like nicotine pouches. It is particularly important in the context of the country’s high demographic dividend and the government’s focus on the youth.
The limitations of India’s existing drug policy become particularly visible when drug use is examined not as an individual problem but as a phenomenon embedded in wider structures. Examples from states like Manipur show why an individual-centred perspective cannot capture the entirety of the current drug crisis.
India's Drug Policy At A Crossroads
India’s approach to narcotic drugs
India’s approach towards recreational possession and consumption of drugs is primarily based on Article 47 of the Constitution, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, and the National Policy on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (2012). Article 47 of the Constitution states that “…the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.”
The NDPS Act generally prohibits, except for medical or scientific purposes, activities like the manufacture, production, trade, and use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. It defines narcotic drugs as a legal category, which includes substances like opium, coca leaf and cocaine, cannabis, poppy straw, manufactured narcotic drugs, etc. Psychotropic substances include stimulants, sedatives, etc. The non-narcotic drugs are not a homogeneous category.
The NDPS policy seeks to curb the menace of drug abuse and contains provisions for treatment, rehabilitation and social reintegration of victims of drug abuse. The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), created in 1986, is the apex drug law enforcement agency under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Drug trafficking and commercial possession are heavily criminalised. Medical narcotics are legal under strict regulation, and addiction treatment is supported as part of both state and non-state public health programmes.
Addiction and crises
There is a convergence of drug trafficking with organised crime, illegal arms, money laundering, insurgency and cyber-enabled trafficking. Both academic and policy research on Manipur show how the state’s narcotics problem is not only about drugs but is embedded in wider ethnic, political, historical, and territorial dimensions.
The rise in illicit poppy cultivation is seen as posing an additional threat to the already conflict-ridden society. In The Quest to End Illicit Poppy Cultivation in Manipur: Examining the War on Drugs Campaign (2021), Lily Sangpui and Jenny Kapngaihlian illustrate how drug abuse is a serious concern in Manipuri society. Poppy is cultivated mainly in rural areas, where land is readily available. Decades of armed conflict, insurgency, and ethnic violence have made people suffer, and farmers usually choose to cultivate poppies because of poverty.
A similar observation can be made at the global level, with Afghanistan providing a case in point. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2025, the drug use rates among adults in Afghanistan are twice the global average. It is also the major source of the world’s illicit opium production, indicating how the drug and other crises are interrelated.
Poppy cultivation in the country has contributed to widespread opium addiction across age groups, as well as to the destruction of natural ecosystems. Thus, drug production intersects with poverty, conflict, livelihoods, addiction and wider political and ecological conditions. What we see is substantive changes in substance use, connected to new social locations and technologies.
Changing nature of substance use, and youth
Today, substance use and addiction are not only about traditional drugs. Its nature is changing, and as the examples of Manipur and Afghanistan show, it is not limited to urban areas. Addiction now includes prescription medicines, synthetic drugs, nicotine products, as well as new channels of drug delivery and digital markets.
In An Exploratory Analysis of the Normalisation of Substance Use and its Role in Addiction in India (2026), Ruth Dutta shows how substance use is normalised through peer networks that make addiction not merely an individual act, but an outcome of broader social and cultural factors. Consumption of substances like alcohol, for instance, may become normalised through festivals, weddings and social gatherings. This suggests that drug policy needs to reach the grassroots.
Moreover, the changing technological environment is increasingly shaping such processes of normalisation. For the youth, digital markets and the platform economy are creating new ways of accessing drugs. Online drug markets impact how drugs are advertised, purchased, and delivered. Digital spaces also make it easy to access drug-related information and build peer networks.
Addiction is increasingly connected to new substances like nicotine pouches and new modes of access. Dan Romer and Megan Moreno’s 2017 study, Digital Media and Risks for Adolescent Substance Abuse and Problematic Gambling (Paediatrics), shows how young people are exposed to favourable presentations of addictive substances, such as alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, as well as behaviours such as gambling, on social and other online media.
Nicotine pouches and regulatory gaps
Nicotine pouches illustrate this emerging regulatory ambiguity. Characteristics such as product diversity, new flavours and packaging, digital availability, guarded modes of consumption and regulatory uncertainty make them very attractive. The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003 (COTPA) governs the marketing, advertising, and sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. But its statutory definition does not include tobacco-free nicotine pouches. Nicotine pouches contain nicotine and flavouring ingredients but do not contain tobacco leaves.
Nicotine is also not listed as a drug under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940. Schedule K of the Drug Rules 1945 exempts certain nicotine gums and lozenges, which contain less than 2 mg of nicotine, from licensing and prescription requirements. However, the Drug Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) in August 2026 recommended restricting over-the-counter (OTC) access to most nicotine replacement products. It only exempts unflavoured 2 mg nicotine gums and excludes nicotine lozenges (2 mg).
The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and the Food Safety and Standards (FSSAI) Act, 2006 categorise food as any processed, partially processed, or unprocessed substance meant for human consumption. The FSSAI states that nicotine cannot be added to food products. Nicotine pouches also fall outside the framework of the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act, 2019, as a pouch does not heat anything, generate aerosol, or deliver nicotine through the lungs.
Thus, what legal category a tobacco-free nicotine pouch falls into is a difficult question and leads us to regulatory gaps in India’s drug policy. A study by the Indian Council of Medical Research-National Institute of Cancer Prevention and Research (ICMR-NICPR) finds that nicotine pouches, available in 445 flavours and with strengths up to 120 mg, are reaching Indian cities through online platforms, hookah shops, and gig delivery services.
Under Section 18 of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, oral nicotine pouches (excluding approved nicotine replacement therapies such as gums, patches, and lozenges) constitute unapproved drugs, with violations under Section 27(b)(ii) of the same Act. These pouches are creating new addiction avenues for young people in the country. The widespread prevalence of these recreational flavoured pouches makes enforcement under drug laws legally debatable.
Challenges for substance-use policy
The case of nicotine pouches illustrates how substance-use policy can face challenges when new forms of consumption and new modes of access emerge faster than the legal and institutional frameworks designed to regulate them.
At the same time, synthetic drugs and new psychoactive substances are also complicating the patterns of drug use. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug Report 2024 noted a 20% increase in drug use over the past decade, adding that the emergence of new synthetic opioids has increased the global drug problem.
Opioids like cannabis, opium, and heroin are among the substances commonly misused in India. Changing patterns of access, use, and addiction underline the need for an effective system of local monitoring for drug misuse. New drug networks, such as synthetic ones, nicotine pouches, etc., need to be monitored, accompanied by accessible systems of care rooted in rehabilitation.
Can the community-based approach help?
Addiction is often accompanied by social stigma, which discourages individuals from seeking help. There is a need to strengthen and build local-level addiction treatment facilities and de-addiction centres. Community-based approaches, similar to those adopted in Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, are also required. In Tamil Nadu, anti-drug awareness clubs were inaugurated in schools and colleges in 2025.
The 2017 amendment of the Sikkim Anti-Drugs Act, 2006 (SADA), adopts a rehabilitative approach. It makes psychiatric evaluation of drug users compulsory and places greater emphasis on detoxification and rehabilitation. In 2018, the SADA decriminalised drug use, and the focus completely shifted towards rehabilitation and treatment rather than arrest.
The Kerala Government’s Student Police Cadet (SPC) project, launched in 2010, is designed for high school students and trains the youth to be responsible, civic-minded future leaders. The focus is on physical fitness, strict discipline, civic responsibility, and legal awareness. Such initiatives in other states can prove useful in combating substance abuse.
Addressing contemporary addiction requires not only stronger enforcement, but also a more adaptive public-health and community-based policy framework that can identify emerging patterns of use and respond to them at the local level.
Post read questions
1. How do changing social norms, youth culture and digital platforms influence contemporary patterns of substance use among young people?
2. Drug abuse is not merely a law-and-order issue but also a public-health and social-development challenge. Explain.
3. Drug trafficking increasingly intersects with organised crime, illicit finance, insurgency and emerging technologies. Examine the implications for India’s internal security.
4. The effectiveness of drug policy depends as much on community-based prevention and rehabilitation as on prohibition and enforcement. Examine.
5. Examine the challenges posed by emerging forms of substance use to India’s existing legal and regulatory framework. Suggest suitable reforms.
(Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati.)
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