French nicotine pouch ban is ‘attack on Swedish way of life’

 Is Swedish nicotine like French wine?

The FT has the story:

"French nicotine pouch ban is ‘attack on Swedish way of life’, minister says. Stockholm smoulders over France’s ‘absurd’ penalties of up to five years in prison for cigarette alternatives, by Mari Novik in Strasbourg and Sarah White in Paris

 "A Swedish minister has accused France of mounting “an attack on the Swedish way of living” with its ban on nicotine pouches, setting aflame a single market fight over how governments should regulate smoke-free alternatives to tobacco.

"France last month implemented one of Europe’s strictest bans on the pouches, a flavoured sachet that users tuck under their lip to release nicotine.

"France’s decree goes beyond other EU countries’ prohibitions by banning not just sales but import, possession and use of the pouches. A Swede carrying a tin of pouches legally bought at home could face French penalties of up to five years in prison and a €375,000 fine.
 

“It is as if we would prohibit French baguettes or French wine in Sweden,” Swedish trade minister Benjamin Dousa told the FT. “It is absurd.”

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Earlier:

Tuesday, May 19, 2026  WHO reports on the global growth of nicotine pouches

Mark Granovetter and I discuss Moral Economics

 Speaking with the great sociologist Mark Granovetter gave me the opportunity to tell the joke "“Economists study how people make choices; sociologists study why people don’t have choices," since Moral Economics is about the controversial markets over which society struggles with which choices should be allowed and which should be banned.

 Stanford's Center for the History of Capitalism sponsored the conversation, and here it is on YouTube, but it's just a podcast, there's audio of our conversation, but no video. 

 

Here's an alternative photo from  Stanford's History of Capitalism program:

 

Work and Moral Economics: Two Podcasts (Dart Lindsley's "Work for Humans" and Ben Zweig's "The Economics of Work).

Two podcasts interview me about Moral Economics, starting from a concern with work. 

 Dart Lindsley interviews me on his Podcast "Work for Humans":

Moral Economics: Where Human Values Shape Markets | Alvin Roth
Work For Humans 

Here it is on every platform.  

 

"A kidney transplant does not work like buying a gallon of milk. Neither does hiring or getting into a medical residency. In these markets, both sides care deeply about who they end up with, and a good outcome depends on more than money. 

Alvin Roth has spent his career studying what makes those systems succeed or fail. His work designing kidney exchange programs showed that even when people desperately want to help each other, the market can still break down unless the rules create the right kind of match. In this episode, Dart and Al discuss matching markets, moral economics, and the hidden rules that shape opportunity, fairness, and work itself.

Alvin Roth is an economist and professor at Stanford University best known for his work on market design and matching theory. He received the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on stable matching and the design of markets used in medical residencies, school choice, and kidney exchange.

In this episode, Dart and Al discuss:
- Why some markets depend on matching
- Why fit matters more than money
- What makes a market stable
- Why real markets are messy
- The difference between theory and engineering
- What “repugnant transactions” are
- Why societies ban some exchanges
- How social norms shape markets
- Why work is also a matching problem
- And other topics…

Alvin Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and recipient of the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, awarded with Lloyd Shapley for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design. His work has helped design matching systems for medical residencies, public school admissions, and kidney exchange programs. He is the author of Who Gets What — and Why and Moral Economics: Why Good and Bad Markets Exist.

Resources Mentioned:
Al’s Book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work

Al’s Book, Who Gets What — and Why

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And here's Ben Zweig's The Economics of Work:

  "It was so fun talking to Alvin Roth, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics. "One of my favorite books of all time is Who Gets What and Why, which has shaped the way I view labor markets. His second book, Moral Economics, came out last week and it’s so so good - endlessly thought provoking, funny, and sharp. In the podcast, we talk about controversial markets and what makes something repugnant, how to think about exploitation and coercion, and what that means for labor markets. "Check out the latest episode of The Economics of Work and Al's new book Moral Economics! "Moral Economics from Basic Books: Amazon: https://a.co/d/0cu6ZCLm Podcast Episode: Apple: https://lnkd.in/esVGQQx5 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e4sr844Q Youtube: https://lnkd.in/eif7DHMS" 

The Economist reviews Moral Economics

 It appears that even a week after book-publication week, I'm not finished with book news.

This week The Economist reviewed Moral Economics.  

Here's the short version, from the issue's overview in World in Brief.

"Alvin Roth investigates repugnant markets

"Would you like to buy a kidney? How about heroin? Or sex? Don’t worry: you haven’t wandered down the wrong alley—these and other morally questionable transactions are the subject of a new book by Alvin Roth, a Nobel-prize winning economist. Published in Britain on Thursday, “Moral Economics” looks at the murky world of “repugnant transactions”: deals in which buyers and sellers happily transact, but which onlookers would rather ban on moral grounds.

"For Mr Roth, moral economics is about trade-offs. Are the harms of allowing an activity greater than those of disallowing it? Policy, he argues, should weigh both. Two principles emerge. First, bans never fully work: motivated buyers and sellers find workarounds. Second, prohibition generally reduces the size of the market; it would be cheaper and easier to buy heroin if it was legal. It might also be safer. That leaves Mr Roth asking whether the restrictions or the market cause more harm. Here, too, the answer is that it depends." 

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And here's a link to the longer review, from the Free Exchange column. That column is unsigned, but others on the web have attributed it to Gavin Jackson, who did interview me about the book.  Here is the resulting review:

How should economists treat morality? 

 My review of the review is that it missed some of the nuances in my book, but many aspects of the big picture came through clearly:

"The picture that emerges from the book is of a deeply moral person, who believes in bodily autonomy, in not subordinating individual lives to a collective and in not accepting unnecessary deaths to spare some people from feeling squeamish." 

Al Roth in conversation with Paul Milgrom about Moral Economics at Kepler's, Today 7pm

 Paul Milgrom and I will chat about Moral Economics and market design. (However, NB, Kepler's charges admission...:(

 Book talk at Kepler's, Thursday May 21, 7pm: Moral Economics, by Al Roth in conversation with Paul Milgrom

Kepler's Books 1010 El Camino Real Menlo Park, CA, 94025 

 "Nobel Prize–⁠winning economist Alvin E. Roth reframes some of our fiercest moral debates as markets, offering a solution that protects the vulnerable while preserving people’s rights to pursue their own interests. 

"About Moral Economics
Some of the most intractable controversies in our society are, essentially, about which actions and transactions should be banned. Should women and couples be able to purchase contraception, access in vitro fertilization, and end pregnancy by obtaining an abortion? Should people be able to buy marijuana? What about fentanyl? Can someone be paid to donate blood plasma, or a kidney?

"Disagreements are fierce because arguments on both sides are often made in uncompromising moral or religious terms. But in Moral Economics, Nobel Prize–winning economist Alvin E. Roth asserts that we can make progress on these and other difficult topics if we view them as markets—tools to help decide who gets what—and understand how those markets can be finetuned to be more functional. Markets don’t have to allow everything or ban everything. Prudent market design can find a balance between preserving people’s rights to pursue their own interests and protecting the most vulnerable from harm.

"Combining Roth’s unparalleled expertise as market design pioneer with his incisive, witty accounts of complicated issues, Moral Economics offers a powerful and innovative new framework for resolving today’s hardest controversies.

"About the Speakers 

Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University. A pioneering expert in the field of market design, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and past president of the American Economic Association, he lives in Stanford, California.

Paul Milgrom is the Shirley R. and Leonard W. Ely, Jr. Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. He was awarded the 2020 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His books include Putting Auction Theory to Work (2004) and Economics, Organization, and Management (1992). He has also written dozens of articles on auction design, game theory, and macro- and microeconomics."

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Metro Silicon Valley covers the talk this way:

"Nobel Prize-winning economist Alvin E. Roth is not exactly light entertainment, but this does sound like the rare bookstore talk built to pull in people beyond the usual policy crowd. The book is Moral Economics, his new argument that some of our ugliest public fights make more sense when you stop treating them as pure morality plays and start looking at them as markets with consequences. With fellow Nobel winner Paul Milgrom joining him, this should be smart without getting bloodless, and probably sharper, funnier, and more contentious than the phrase market design first suggests." 

 

Neale Mahoney interviews me abut Moral Economics on Econ to Go

 Neale Mahoney interviews me on Econ to go (with a transcript of our half hour conversation).

 "Neale Mahoney: Markets are often treated like natural objects, things that simply exist. But economist Al Roth sees them differently. To him, markets are human inventions, systems we design, shape, and sometimes struggle to agree on. Because when money and morality collide, things can get complicated. Who should be allowed to buy and sell? What should they be allowed to transact? and what happens when people want to trade things that others find morally unacceptable.

Alvin Roth: I think that one of the things we need to do is experiment on what we're morally obliged to do and reflect on it in connection with what we're actually able to do. 

Neale Mahoney: I'm Neale Mahoney, Economist and Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. On this episode of "Econ To Go," I catch up with Stanford Economist and Nobel Laureate Al Roth over coffee on campus. We talk about what he calls moral economics, the study of markets where society struggles to agree on what should be bought and sold. From kidney exchange to commercial surrogacy, from prostitution laws to the surprising economics of matchmaking, Al shows us that markets don't just allocate goods. They also reflect our values. You've said that markets and marketplaces are human artifacts. They are not just features of the natural environment. Why is that a good starting place when we think about the study of economics?

Alvin Roth: Well, for a long time, economists sort of thought that markets were things that we just had to take as given. You know, we speak of economists thinking of people as price takers, but in fact, they also thought of us as market takers. There are these markets. But of course, markets are human artifacts. To a great extent they're collective human artifacts, but marketplaces are often artifacts of individual companies or designers, or small groups of participants who modify the marketplace to fit their needs over time, just in the way that Uber is a marketplace designed by the company Uber. But I think there's a good analogy, which is that languages are also human artifacts, and they're collective human artifacts. You and I can speak to each other in English because we both learned English in a conventional way, but there are lots of words in our English that weren't in the language 100 years ago, words like computer and internet and AI. So, we're constantly modifying the language to better suit our needs."

Here is the whole half hour interview on YouTube:

 

There's also a Stanford news story:

Sex, drugs & surrogacy: When morality and markets clash
Stanford’s Alvin Roth won the Nobel Prize for improving how markets work. In a new book, he introduces a new way of thinking about society’s most controversial transactions, from sex work to drugs to assisted dying.  byKrysten Crawford
 

WHO reports on the global growth of nicotine pouches

 The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a report written by Robert K. Jackler, Divya Ramamurthi and Cindy Chau (Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising), and Ranti Fayokun (Tobacco Free Initiative, Department of Health Determinants, Promotion and Prevention, WHO).

Exposing marketing tactics and strategies driving the global growth of nicotine pouches 

 

"Key messages of the report are:
• The global market for nicotine pouches is growing rapidly.
• Nicotine pouches can be highly addictive; furthermore, some have high concentrations of nicotine, and some increase the speed and intensity of nicotine delivery (e.g. “pearls technology”).
• Labelling of nicotine content is not standardized and can be confusing and misleading.
• Some nicotine pouch packaging mimics popular candy products and contain high nicotine levels. If they are ingested by children, they can pose a lethal risk.
• Nicotine pouches often contain various youth-appealing flavours (e.g. sweet, fruity, mint/menthol), such as Cherry Punch and Frosted Apple, and candy-like flavours (e.g. “bubble gum” and “gummy bears”), which are particularly attractive to children.
The flavours of numerous alcoholic drinks are also used, marketed as “After dark”.
• Nicotine pouches often promote high-intensity nicotine and flavours with slogans such as “nicotine like never before” and visual depictions of the user experiencing a cooling effect.

• Nicotine pouches are aggressively marketed and promoted to young people.
– They are heavily advertised on youth-frequented social and digital media platforms, including through influencers.
– They are frequently promoted with youthful themes, including fun times with friends, romance and sports.
– They are often promoted for “discreet” or stealthy use, making it difficult to detect by parents or teachers, and as a way of breaking the rules.
– Manufacturers of nicotine pouches commonly sponsor youth-oriented events, where nicotine pouches and branded merchandise are distributed by attractive, young “brand ambassadors”.
• Nicotine pouch advertisements often use the tobacco industry’s “playbook” for marketing conventional tobacco products, such as cigarettes, including:
– “lifestyle marketing” and “identity marketing”, the message sometimes portraying how a consumer wishes to be perceived by others;
– depictions of nicotine pouches as “modern” and “high-tech”; and
– portrayal of nicotine pouches as boosting energy when the user is tired and helping the user to relax when stressed. Marketers call this “elasticity of meaning”, depicting the product as something that works for everyone in any situation.
• Nicotine pouch manufacturers market and associate their brands with holidays (e.g. Christmas) and cultural symbols (e.g. patriotism) to evoke happy times and celebrations.
• Messaging in nicotine pouch advertisements can appear contradictory, expressing opposing views; however, this is carefully crafted and tailored to different target groups, such as:
– co-marketing of a nicotine pouch brand with promotion of a flagship cigarette (or other tobacco) brand, while also marketing of nicotine pouches and conveying anti-cigarette messaging (e.g. “goodbye smoke smell”).
• Nicotine pouches are marketed with unsubstantiated claims that they aid smoking cessation and/or in ways that undermine quit attempts.
• Nicotine pouches are often promoted as a product for “Anytime, Anywhere”, with images of places in which smoking is not allowed. This marketing tactic can encourage dual use, hinder cessation attempts and undermine regulations prohibiting smoking or use of other tobacco and related products in public places.
• There is insufficient national action, whereby nicotine pouches commonly fall through regulatory gaps and thus either un- or lightly regulated.
• WHO calls for a comprehensive approach to tobacco control, covering the full spectrum of tobacco and related products, including nicotine pouches, and closing regulatory loopholes. "