The PACT Act, in plain English.

What the PACT Act is

The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act is federal law governing the interstate sale and shipment of tobacco products. It was amended in 2021 to bring in electronic nicotine delivery systems, which is the change the industry talks about most. For pouches, that is not actually the relevant part.

Does it even cover a nicotine pouch?

Honestly: that is unsettled, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

The 2021 ENDS amendment defines an ENDS as an electronic device delivering nicotine through an aerosolized solution to someone inhaling from it. A pouch is none of those three things, so that route plainly does not reach it. The live question is the Act's older “smokeless tobacco” definition, which covers tobacco and “other product containing tobacco” intended for the mouth. A tobacco-free pouch contains nicotine derived from tobacco but no tobacco material — so whether it is a product “containing tobacco” is a real argument, and no federal agency has published an answer.

Where the obligations actually sit

This page used to tell you these were mostly your problem. That was wrong, and worth correcting properly.

15 U.S.C. § 376 puts the duties on “any person who sells, transfers, or ships for profit” covered product in interstate commerce. That is the shipper. On a shipment from our Chicago warehouse to you, the shipper is us. That means registration with the US Attorney General and with the destination state's tobacco tax administrator, and a monthly report of every shipment filed by the tenth of the following month.

What does land on you

• Your own shipping. If you resell within your own state to walk-in retail, your position is quite different from a business shipping across state lines. The moment you ship interstate, you become a shipper too and these same duties attach to you.
• Retail and distributor licensing in each state you operate in.
• State excise tax in most states — separate from the PACT Act entirely. Usually levied on the distributor or first owner inside the state. Not always: Indiana makes a remote seller liable where no Indiana distributor has collected it, which puts that one back on us.
• Age verification at point of sale under federal Tobacco 21.
• State product directories where your state runs one — California and Louisiana both gate which nicotine products may lawfully be sold.

The definitions, the state filing formats and the scope all move. That is why this page describes the shape and tells you where it is uncertain, rather than pretending to be a compliance manual.

What we do on our side

We sell to licensed businesses only, and we confirm your licence for the state you're shipping to before the first order. We do not ship into states where the product cannot lawfully be sold. We provide documentation — Certificate of Analysis, ingredient declarations and batch records — on request.

What we don't do

We don't file on your behalf, we don't advise on your obligations, and we won't tell you that a state is clear when we aren't certain. If we don't know, we'll say so and suggest you check.

Where to get real answers

A US regulatory attorney who works in tobacco and nicotine products. It's a specialised area, the rules genuinely do change, and the cost of an hour of proper advice is a fraction of the cost of getting it wrong. We can also tell you what we've seen other buyers in your state do — useful context, still not advice.