One northern English city pulled 2.9 million illicit nicotine items off its shelves in a single year. Not 2,900. Not 29,000. Almost three million, in Hull alone. That number comes from a fresh analysis of council seizure data published in June 2026, and it puts a hard figure on something pouch users have suspected for a while: the legal market and the dodgy one are now running side by side, and plenty of people cannot tell which is which.
The nicotine pouch experts at Haypp pulled Freedom of Information records from trading standards teams across the country and ranked them. The result is the closest thing we have to a map of where Britain's illicit pouch problem is worst. If you buy pouches in the UK, it is worth knowing where your town sits on it, and why the answer matters more than a league table normally would.
So what did the new data actually find?
Across the UK, councils logged more than 3,000 separate seizure incidents involving illicit nicotine products during 2024/25. That covers vapes, smokeless tobacco and nicotine pouches, all lumped together under the heading of products that should not have been on sale.
The headline is the concentration. A handful of areas are doing a huge share of the enforcement, while large parts of the country barely register. That can mean two very different things. Either those areas have a bigger problem, or they have trading standards teams with the funding and the appetite to go looking. The honest answer is probably a bit of both. A seizure only happens where someone is paid to walk into a shop and check.
Haypp's scientific affairs director, Dr Marina Murphy, put the risk plainly. Illicit products can leave consumers exposed to poor quality or unsafe goods, she said, because the manufacturing is unregulated and the ingredient levels are unknown. That is the part that should make you sit up. With a legal pouch you know roughly what you are getting. With an illicit one you are guessing.
Which councils are seizing the most?
Here is the top ten for 2024/25, ranked by the number of recorded seizure incidents.
| Rank | Council | Seizure incidents (2024/25) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hull City Council | 318 |
| 2 | Liverpool City Council | 183 |
| 3 | Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council | 170 |
| 4 | Kent County Council | 169 |
| 5 | Stoke-on-Trent City Council | 166 |
| 6 | Lancashire County Council | 134 |
| 7 | Warwickshire County Council | 93 |
| 8 | Coventry City Council | 91 |
| 9= | Southwark Borough Council | 85 |
| 9= | Lincolnshire County Council | 85 |
Stretch the window to five years, from 2020/21 to 2024/25, and the same names keep coming back. Hull tops that table too with 815 incidents, followed by Liverpool on 428 and Lancashire on 426. This is not a one-off spike. A small group of areas has been at the sharp end of this for half a decade.
One number cuts through the rest. Bolton seized 3,294 individual nicotine pouch products in 2024/25. That is pouches specifically, not vapes or tobacco padding out the figure. It tells you the pouch share of this trade is real and growing, not a rounding error.
Why does Hull keep topping the table?
Hull has sat at number one for years, and the 2.9 million figure for a single year is genuinely startling. So is Hull a uniquely lawless place for pouches? Probably not in the way it sounds.
What Hull has is a trading standards operation that goes after this stuff hard and records what it finds. When a team raids a warehouse or a string of corner shops and pulls millions of items in one go, the count balloons fast. A single big bust can dwarf a year of smaller checks somewhere else. So the league table is partly a map of the problem and partly a map of who is fighting it. The places at the bottom are not necessarily clean. Some of them just are not looking.
That is the uncomfortable bit for the rest of the country. If your area is not on this list, it does not mean the pouches in your local shop have been checked. It might just mean nobody has had the budget to check them.
What is actually inside an illicit pouch?
This is the question that matters more than any ranking. A legal nicotine pouch sold in the UK typically carries somewhere between 6mg and 20mg of nicotine per pouch. Some of the illicit products turning up in raids claim 150mg. Trading standards have seized pouches running past 150mg, which is more than three times the strength of anything you would find in a reputable shop.
At that level the nicotine stops being a buzz and starts being a problem. Users of fake pouches have reported gum pain and bleeding as their mouths react to a dose far beyond what they expected. The packets are often dressed up to look like VELO or Nordic Spirit, two of the most trusted names on the shelf, which is exactly why people get caught out. You think you are buying a familiar brand. You are buying a copy made with none of the quality control.
There is a tell, and it is a good one. A lot of these consignments fall foul of UK chemical labelling rules because the safety information on the packet is printed in Spanish rather than English. If the warnings on your tin are in another language, that tin was never meant for legal sale here. Put it down.
And the strength printed on the front is not reliable anyway. Tests on counterfeit pouches found the actual nicotine content varied wildly from one pouch to the next, even inside the same tin. So you are not just risking a stronger pouch than you wanted. You are risking a different dose every single time, with no way to know until it is already under your lip.
How did the UK end up with no rules until now?
Here is the part that surprises people. For years there has been no legal minimum age to buy a nicotine pouch in this country. No cap on strength. No rules on how they are advertised, branded or displayed. A pouch has been treated as an ordinary consumer product, closer to a packet of mints than to a tobacco product, even though it delivers a serious hit of nicotine.
That gap is why the illicit trade had such an easy run. When there is no strength limit to break and no age check to dodge, the line between a cheeky import and an outright illegal product gets blurry, and the people selling 150mg pouches to teenagers have been operating in that grey zone.
It is closing now. The Tobacco and Vapes Act became law in 2026, and the changes are landing in stages. A minimum age of sale of 18 for nicotine pouches comes in on 29 October 2026, which finally makes it illegal to sell them to children. Restrictions on advertising and sponsorship follow on 1 June 2027. There is also a strong steer towards capping pouch strength to bring it in line with vape limits, which would put an end to the 150mg products at a stroke.
Notably, pouches dodged October's new Vaping Products Duty, the £2.20 per 10ml levy that hits e-liquids from 1 October 2026. Pouches stay on standard VAT only. That keeps the legal product cheap, which is good news if you want people choosing the regulated version over a dodgy import.
How do you spot a dodgy pouch before you buy it?
You do not need to be a trading standards officer to avoid the worst of this. A few quick checks cover most of it.
- Read the label language. UK safety warnings should be in English. Spanish or other foreign-language labelling is a red flag that the product was never cleared for sale here.
- Sanity check the strength. Legal pouches sit between roughly 6mg and 20mg. Anything boasting 50mg, 100mg or 150mg is not a legal UK product, full stop.
- Look at the price. If a tin is far cheaper than the same brand everywhere else, ask why. Genuine stock does not get sold at a loss.
- Check the seller. Buy from established retailers and the brands' own sites. Pop-up market stalls and sketchy corner shops are where most of the seized stock was heading.
- Inspect the tin. Smudged printing, wonky logos, missing batch numbers and dodgy spelling all point to a counterfeit dressed up as VELO, ZYN or Nordic Spirit.
None of this is foolproof, but it filters out the stuff most likely to hurt you. The counterfeiters are good at the front of the tin. They are usually worse at the boring legal detail on the back.
What does this mean if you use pouches?
The takeaway is not that nicotine pouches are suddenly more dangerous than they were last week. Legal, regulated pouches are unchanged. The point is that a parallel market has grown up next to them, the products in it can carry several times the nicotine you think you are getting, and the data shows it is now widespread enough that thousands of seizures a year barely keep pace.
Knowing your area sits high on the league table is useful, but the more practical lesson is to stop trusting the front of the tin and start checking the back. Buy from somewhere reputable, ignore anything claiming a wild strength, and walk away from foreign-language packaging. Do that and the seizure map becomes someone else's problem.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as an illicit nicotine pouch in the UK?
An illicit pouch is one that breaks UK rules on safety, labelling or content. In practice that usually means foreign-language warnings, missing safety information, or a nicotine strength far above the 6mg to 20mg range you find in legal products. Many are counterfeits made to look like real brands.
Which UK city seizes the most illicit nicotine products?
Hull City Council recorded the most, with 318 seizure incidents in 2024/25 and 815 across the five years to 2024/25. In a single year Hull pulled around 2.9 million illicit nicotine items off the market.
Are strong illicit pouches dangerous?
They can be. Some seized pouches claim 150mg of nicotine, more than three times the strength of a legal product. Users have reported gum pain and bleeding from doses far higher than expected, and tests show the real strength can vary unpredictably from pouch to pouch.
How can I tell if my nicotine pouches are fake?
Check that the safety labelling is in English, that the strength is within the normal 6mg to 20mg range, and that the tin looks professionally printed with a batch number. Foreign-language packaging, sky-high strength claims and a suspiciously low price are the clearest warning signs.
Is there an age limit for buying nicotine pouches in the UK?
Not yet, but that changes soon. A legal minimum age of 18 for nicotine pouches comes into force on 29 October 2026 under the Tobacco and Vapes Act. Until then there is no statutory age check, which is part of why youth access has been such a concern.
Will the UK cap how strong nicotine pouches can be?
It looks likely. The government has signalled it wants to bring pouch strength into line with vape limits, which would rule out the very high strength products driving much of the illicit trade. The exact cap is still being finalised under the new rules.
Why are so many illicit pouches labelled in Spanish?
A large share of seized consignments were produced for other markets and imported without meeting UK chemical labelling rules. Because the safety information is in Spanish rather than English, the products breach UK law on sight, which is one of the quickest ways trading standards identify them.
Where should I buy nicotine pouches to stay safe?
Stick to established retailers and the official websites of brands such as VELO, ZYN and Nordic Spirit. Avoid market stalls, unfamiliar corner shops and any seller offering well-known brands at prices that look too good to be true.
