New ZYN Nicotine Pouches and JUUL2 Gain FDA Authorization

After several months of little happening in vape and nicotine product regulation, late August 2026 has brought a flurry of FDA announcements and authorizations. And these authorizations concern some of the biggest names in modern nicotine products: ZYN and JUUL.

New JUUL + New Technology = FDA Authorization

JUUL Labs, the brand behind possibly the best-known devices in the history of vaping, and arguably the one that kicked off the youth vaping panic that has gripped the U.S. and the rest of the world in the past several years, has managed to obtain marketing authorization for a completely new device, the JUUL2, and two new disposable pods. These are the first JUUL products to gain FDA authorization since July 2025, when a device and a few tobacco and menthol pods passed FDA review.

The JUUL2 is similar in design to the original JUUL device in many ways, but different in a few important areas. The main one, the one that very likely helped it gain FDA authorization, is the built-in age verification. It can only be used when linked to a smartphone app that verifies the user’s age, which regulators presumably feel is a reliable way to stop it from appealing to underage vapers.

So far, the only two pods that can legally be used with the JUUL2 are tobacco and menthol flavors, but this technology has the potential to allow JUUL Labs to launch other flavors in the near future. Both pods are significantly lower in strength than previous versions, dropping from between 3% and 5% to around 1.6%. This is another factor that likely helped the new device gain authorization.

The new JUUL products with marketing authorization are: 

• JUUL2 Device
• Virginia Tobacco 2-pack 18 mg/mL nicotine JUUL2 pod
• Polar Menthol 18 mg/mL nicotine JUUL2 pod

ZYN Benefits from Streamlined FDA Pouch Review Process

August 2026 also saw 11 new ZYN nicotine pouches gain marketing authorization from the FDA, expanding the overall total number of authorized pouch products to 43. All 11 pouches are in the ZYN Ultra range and will now legally sit beside both the original ZYN pouches and Helix Innovations !On products, the only other pouch brand to gain Marketing Granted Orders to date.

ZYN Ultra pouches differ slightly from the previously authorized products from Swedish Match USA. Unlike the older pouches, they are only available in 9mg or 11mg strengths and are described as moist pouches rather than dry.

The review of these new ZYN pouches, which found that they contain lower levels of most harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs) when compared to other oral and smokeless tobacco products (too low to even be quantified in some cases), was part of the FDA nicotine pouch pilot review process. This was introduced in late 2025 specifically to increase efficiency and streamline the review process for premarket tobacco product applications (PMTAs) for nicotine pouch products.

The new ZYN products with marketing authorization are:

• ZYN ULTRA Chill 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Citrus 9 mg 
• ZYN ULTRA Cool Mint 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Deep Freeze 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Menthol 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Peppermint 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Smooth 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Smooth 11 mg 
• ZYN ULTRA Spearmint 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Wintergreen Chill 9 mg
• ZYN ULTRA Wintergreen 9 mg