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Bahrain

Bahrain just became the first Gulf state to regulate nicotine pouches

Bahrain's Ministry of Industry and Commerce passed Resolution 54/2025 — a dedicated technical regulation for nicotine pouches, in force since 31 January 2026. It sets a 20mg per-pouch cap, pharmaceutical-grade nicotine, child-resistant packaging, 30% health-warning area, and flavour restrictions. The Health Ministry is now running market-monitoring and label-matching enforcement.

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Bahrainnicotine pouchregulationGulfMENA20mg capflavor restrictionsResolution 54/2025child-resistant packaginghealth warnings

Bahrain has done something no other Gulf state has done: it has written a dedicated technical regulation for tobacco-free nicotine pouches.

The country's Ministry of Industry and Commerce issued Resolution No. 54 of 2025 on 30 July 2025, publishing it in the Official Gazette the next day and bringing it into force on 31 January 2026. The resolution approves a National Technical Regulation for Nicotine Pouch Products — the first such rule anywhere in the Gulf Cooperation Council region aimed specifically at the pouch category.

Until now, Bahrain's tobacco law (Law 8/2009) covered cigarettes and oral tobacco — and oral tobacco, including snus, is banned outright. Tobacco-free nicotine pouches sat in a gap: not old-style smokeless tobacco, not e-cigarettes, and not covered by any dedicated standard. Resolution 54/2025 closes that gap with a product standard that reads more like a pharma spec than a tobacco rule.

What the regulation requires

The technical regulation sets detailed product, additive, packaging and labelling rules. The headline ones:

  • Pre-market approval is mandatory. Importing, producing or selling nicotine pouches without official approval is prohibited. Products must comply across their entire labelled shelf life.
  • 20mg nicotine per pouch cap. No individual pouch may contain more than 20mg of nicotine.
  • Pharmaceutical-grade nicotine. The nicotine must meet pharmaceutical-grade purity — either the European Pharmacopoeia or the United States Pharmacopeia standard.
  • pH ceiling of 9.1 on the finished product, and a moisture-activity limit of 0.7 to control microbial risk.
  • 15 to 20 pouches per pack. Packs must contain between 15 and 20 pouches.
  • Food-grade pouch material meeting Bahraini/Gulf food-contact standards.
  • Child-resistant, tamper-evident packaging (BH GSO ISO 8317), with sealing devices that show if a pack has been opened.
  • Health warnings in Arabic and English covering at least 30% of the packaging area. Warnings must be indelible, in a colour that contrasts with the background, and not easily removed.
  • "Sold in the Kingdom of Bahrain" printed in Arabic and English on every pack.

Flavour and marketing limits

The regulation is unusually explicit about what manufacturers cannot do to make pouches appealing:

  • Restricted flavours. Additives are limited to lists in Gulf and international food standards, and a set of flavour categories is excluded outright — spices, alcohol, candies, chewing gum, vanilla, coffee, cocoa, tea and cola.
  • No reduced-risk claims. Packs cannot describe a product as less harmful, natural, organic, additive-free, or as having "mild," "moderate" or "intense" strength — and cannot suggest therapeutic, weight-loss or performance benefits.
  • No lifestyle marketing on the pack. Symbols or designs implying femininity, masculinity, glamour, mood improvement or "improved biological performance" are banned, as is packaging that resembles food, cosmetics or children's toys.
  • No promotions on the pack. Coupons, discount offers, free-distribution deals and bundled offers printed on packaging are prohibited.

That combination — a hard nicotine ceiling, a flavour blacklist, and a ban on both reduced-risk and lifestyle claims — puts Bahrain's pouch regime among the stricter national frameworks globally, and notably tighter than the lightly regulated status pouches had held in the country until January.

Why it matters

Two things make this more than a routine standards update.

First, Bahrain is the first Gulf state to regulate pouches at all. Across the GCC, nicotine pouches have grown quickly as a tobacco-free alternative that slips past snus bans and vape-specific rules. Other MENA governments are moving too — TobaccoIntelligence's July 2026 regional update tracked tightening rules on alternative products across Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia and the UAE — but Bahrain is the one that has put a pouch-specific technical regulation on the books with a clear nicotine cap and flavour restrictions.

Second, enforcement is now live. On 23 August 2026, Health Minister Dr. Jalila bint Sayyid Jawad Hassan chaired the National Committee for Combating Smoking and Tobacco, with the meeting addressing market-monitoring mechanisms under the country's tobacco framework. The Ministry of Health already runs a "Tobacco and Nicotine Package Label Matching" service and a dedicated nicotine-pouch service through its Virtual Service Centre — the machinery to check that what is on shelves actually matches what Resolution 54/2025 requires.

What's next

The regulation has been in force for seven months. The open questions are how strictly the 20mg cap and flavour blacklist are being enforced against products that were already on the market, and whether neighbouring Gulf states — several of which share Gulf Standards Organisation (GSO) technical standards with Bahrain — follow with their own pouch rules. For brands that have treated the Gulf as an under-regulated growth corridor, Bahrain just raised the compliance bar.

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