Pouches vs. Packs: Can Malta Kick Cigarettes with Smokeless Tobacco?

**Are smokeless tobacco products the key to helping Malta quit cigarettes?**

On any given evening in Strait Street, the scent of cigarette smoke mingles with the sea breeze as patrons spill out of bars, their glowing tips tracing conversations into the night. Yet beneath this familiar tableau, a quieter revolution is brewing: pouches of nicotine tucked discreetly under lips, tobacco-free snus sold behind counters, and heated-not-burned sticks that promise the ritual without the combustion. As Malta’s smoking rate stubbornly hovers at 24 %—double the EU average—smokeless tobacco products are being marketed as the Mediterranean’s newest cessation lifeline. But in a country where a packet of cigarettes still costs less than a pastizz and where “ħa nagħmlu drag?” is a social reflex, can a pouch really replace the communal pull of a smoke?

Walk into the Valletta pharmacy opposite the old Opera House and you’ll find ZYN nicotine pouches displayed between the Fisherman’s Friend and the condoms. “We started stocking them last year; now we sell 70 tins a week,” says manager Rebecca Vella. “Buyers range from 19-year-old clubbers who can’t vape inside to pensioners worried about their grandkids seeing them smoke.” The trend mirrors data from Malta’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate: requests for smoke-cessation aids that aren’t patches or gum have jumped 42 % since 2022. Yet the same dataset shows only 3 % of quitters actually switch fully to smokeless; the rest become “dual users”, alternating cigarette and pouch depending on workplace, price, or company.

Price is the first cultural lever. A pack of 20 cigarettes hovers around €5.80, among the cheapest in the eurozone, whereas a tin of 20 nicotine pouches costs €6.50 and lasts longer. “When Budget 2024 added another 50c to rolling tobacco, my friends joked it was cheaper to adopt snus than to keep smoking,” says 28-year-old Gżira graphic designer Luke Micallef, who switched after calculating he spent €2,400 a year on rolling tobacco. The arithmetic is persuasive, but the ritual is harder to replicate. “A cigarette is a comma in Maltese conversation; a pouch is a full stop. You can’t offer someone a ‘pinch’ the way you offer a smoke,” he shrugs.

That communal etiquette is woven into island life. From the village festa where elderly men light each other’s cigarettes while arguing over band marches, to Paceville’s stepped alleyways where club promoters share drags with strangers, smoking is social currency. “Our cessation campaigns ignore culture at their peril,” warns sociologist Dr. Anna Azzopardi, who spent last summer interviewing 120 smokers in Marsa and Birżebbuġa. “Participants told me they’d rather risk illness than exclusion. One man recalled quitting for three months but started again when his co-workers joked he was ‘acting superior’.” Smokeless alternatives, she argues, must therefore be framed not as individual health choices but as collective Maltese evolution—like swapping glass bottles for plastic twist-offs at the każin.

Youth uptake is the elephant in the room. While cigarette sales to under-18s have fallen 36 % since 2015, schools report a black market in flavoured nicotine pouches nicknamed “lip candy”. A 15-year-old in a St. Paul’s Bay secondary school told counsellors that “everyone has a tin; teachers think it’s chewing gum.” The Health Ministry is drafting legislation to treat pouches like tobacco, banning flavours and imposing plain packaging, but enforcement lags. “We can’t police bathrooms when we’re already short-staffed on vaping,” admits a senior education official who requested anonymity.

Meanwhile, the medical community remains split. “Randomised trials show snus halves lung-cancer risk compared with smoking,” says oncologist Dr. Christian Busuttil at Mater Dei. “But we lack long-term Maltese data, and dual use may sustain nicotine addiction.” Nurses on the hospital’s congestive-heart-failure ward tell a different story: patients who switched to heated-tobacco devices arrive with fewer wheezes yet still clogged arteries. “We’re trading one devil for a possibly smaller demon,” charge nurse Pauline Camilleri sighs.

What would a smokeless Malta look like? Picture summer evenings in Għarb where teenagers play village football without cigarette butts studding the pitch, or ferry commuters from Gozo discreetly slipping pouches instead of lighting up on deck. The transition demands more than price signals; it needs new rituals. Some bars are experimenting with “nicotine tasting flights” the way others offer wine pairings. NGOs propose “pouch corners” at festas, mirroring the tea tents that replaced beer stalls at religious events.

Ultimately, Malta’s quit journey will be decided not in Brussels conference rooms but on the limestone steps of local każini, where habits are inherited and mockery is mercy. Smokeless products can be a bridge, but only if we build the cultural planks to walk across. Otherwise, the island risks swapping one addiction for another, leaving the scent of tobacco—burnt or bagged—lingering in the sea air.