When the EU opened its Tobacco Products Directive revision to consultation, nearly 40,000 responses came in. Now the WHO's European office has published its own, and it is the strictest document in the pile. For nicotine pouches, WHO's answer is simple: the directive should regulate them the way it regulates cigarettes — no lighter touch, no exemptions.

What WHO is asking for

The response, published on 1 October 2026, lists seven headline asks for the revised directive. The ones that touch pouches directly:

• A broad, future-proof scope. The directive should cover all tobacco and nicotine products "other than approved medicines" — explicitly including nicotine pouches and "products that are functionally equivalent", covering synthetic nicotine and nicotine analogues. WHO's argument: products with synthetic nicotine currently slip through frameworks written for tobacco-derived nicotine, and that gap should close.
• An EU-wide flavouring ban. WHO wants a "prohibition of flavouring agents, ingredients, product design and other characteristics that facilitate the initiation or sustain product use, particularly among children and adolescents." In pouch terms: the flavour assortment that defines the category would be illegal across the bloc.
• A ban on online and cross-border sales. WHO's advertising section goes beyond marketing: it calls for prohibiting remote and cross-border sales — meaning buying pouches from an online shop in another country would no longer be a legal path.
• Influencer marketing explicitly in the crosshairs. The response asks the directive to prohibit "depictions of products or use by influencers and other content creators likely to have a promotional effect" — a direct hit at the creator-driven marketing that has fuelled pouch growth.
• Plain packaging and pictorial warnings across all product categories, harmonised EU-wide.
• Permission for member states to go further, including "product category prohibitions appropriate to national circumstances" — EU law that explicitly allows a country to ban pouches outright.

WHO also calls for anti-circumvention provisions and states there is "no public health justification for light touch regulation or deregulation of specific product categories."

Why it matters

The Commission is drafting a proposal that will set the rules for the world's largest nicotine-pouch market for the next decade. WHO is one voice in that process — but it is the voice national health ministries tend to quote back, and its positions land in the same direction as France's ban push and Spain's nicotine-cap proposal.

The concrete stakes for pouch users: if the revised directive follows WHO's advice, EU-wide flavour bans, a ban on ordering pouches online across borders, plain packaging, and an explicit legal door for national prohibition become the negotiating baseline.

The counterweight: harm-reduction advocates argue in the same consultation that pouches help smokers quit and should be regulated more like medicines or reduced-risk products, not cigarettes. That divide — WHO-style prohibition-leaning regulation versus risk-proportionate rules — is now the central fight over TPD3, and the Commission's proposal will pick a side somewhere between them.

Nothing in WHO's response is binding, and the consultation has closed. The next real milestone is the Commission's legislative proposal, expected as part of the Safe Hearts workplan.

Previously: the TPD3 consultation closed with nearly 40,000 responses — here is what that fight looked like from both sides.

Compare prices across retailers at PouchFinder: https://www.pouchfinder.com/brand/zyn?utm_source=pouchdaily&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=who-tpd-response

SOURCES:

• WHO Regional Office for Europe, "WHO response to the public consultation on the revision of the European Union Tobacco Products Directive," published 1 October 2026: https://www.who.int/europe/publications/m/item/who-response-to-the-public-consultation-on-the-revision-of-the-european-union-tobacco-products-directive (PDF: https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/librariesprovider2/euro-health-topics/tobacco/who-response-to-the-public-consultation-on-the-revision-of-the-european-union-tobacco-products-directive---who-2026.pdf)