Brownstone Institute
Vaccine Mandates 3 Years Ago This Week
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute
The people who I was meeting found a restaurant that would allow us in even without showing proof of vaccination. We came in the back way and sat at a table near the back to avoid possible detection from the police who were going venue to venue to enforce the rules.
Three years ago on Sept. 9, 2021, the Biden administration released an executive order on “Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees.” It pertained to all federal employees including the military and contractors too. It was just the beginning. The agency OSHA issued an edict that imposed mandates on all businesses with more than 100 employees, plus health care and transportation workers.
Every Human Resources in corporate America got the memo and started the implementation, cutting many people out of a job. At first it did not matter as much for many because people were still working at home. But as people started coming back to the office, the mandates got tighter and tighter, and the mask mandates alongside them. Sometimes there were exemptions for people who agreed to be constantly tested but even those started to dissipate over time.
The frenzy for mandates got extreme by year’s end. The city of New York shut down all its public accommodations to the unvaccinated. You could not go to a restaurant, even fast food, without proof of vaccination. You could not have a beer in a bar. You could not go to the library or theater. Concert tickets required them and so did comedy clubs. The idea was that this would help business because it would make people feel safe. The opposite happened as the unvaccinated ended up avoiding the city entirely.
With New York City as the example, other cities got on board. The idea of medical segregation spread to Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and Seattle. Those who declined to get the untested shot, either because they feared side effects or simply believed that they did not need them, were limited in their travel options. They were the great excluded.
These mandates disproportionately harmed minority populations. The lowest uptake of the vaccines was among the black community, which distrusted them based on a long and egregious history of medical experimentation. Major media took it upon themselves to claim that the refuseniks were disproportionately living in red states, failing to mention that within these states, it was the blue voters who refused them the most.
Many people in these cities found it easiest to forget a piece of paper since the venues did not really care anyway, and only vaguely looked as a formality. We still have no idea just how many of these fake IDs were issued. Was it 20 percent, 50 percent, or more? We’ll probably never know but the Biden administration did in fact prosecute people for fake IDs, so doing so came with some risks. And one would never upload a fake card to any digital media source for purposes of travel or otherwise.
Finally the legal challenges started taking hold. On Jan. 13, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled against OSHA’s mandate on private business and contractors but kept in place the mandate on health-care workers who were more likely than others to have natural immunity from exposure. In any case, the businesses that had already imposed them were unphased by this decision and were slow to let them go, simply because so many had already made enormous sacrifices to comply.
The devastation on business was already done. Politico reported in October 2021 that “Defense and industry officials are sounding warning bells that weapons programs crucial to America’s defense could face delays if enough skilled workers walk-off the job instead of following President Joe Biden’s executive order for all federal employees and contractors to take the Covid vaccine by Dec. 8.” Also affected of course was aviation which experienced a pilot shortage and labor shortage generally. Flight delays and cancellations became a normal event, and it continues to this day.
At some point during the closure of New York City, I needed to be in town to meet a possible donor for a nonprofit. The people who I was meeting found a restaurant that would allow us in even without showing proof of vaccination. We came in the back way and sat at a table near the back to avoid possible detection from the police who were going venue to venue to enforce the rules. Many restaurants were forced to decide between compliance and profitability.
All of this came following a year in which closures had deeply harmed the bottom line. When they were opened, it was only at half-capacity and many had to build outdoor sections because it was widely believed at the time that the virus lived indoors but not in outdoor areas. The mask mandates also applied to all servers while the customers could sit maskless while eating. None of it made any sense but it all happened anyway.
While all of this virus chasing was going on, complete with the segregation and mask enforcement, basic functions of government like protecting the border were sidelined. This led to a migrant crisis in major cities and towns all over the country. That is still going on today, as there is no willingness on the part of those in charge to deport the millions who took advantage of the COVID-19 chaos to hop over the border (with no checks on their vaccine status).
As we look back, it seems almost hard to believe that any of this happened but it did. And then to top it off, it had become increasingly clear even from the spring of 2021 that the vaccine was not protective against infection nor transmission. It had long been known that healthy adults and children were not at medically significant risk from the virus but even among those who were, the shot did not provide the kinds of protection traditionally associated with vaccines.
None of this information deterred those who pushed the mandates. People living abroad, even family members of U.S. citizens, were simply not allowed into the country without proof of vaccination. That mandate survived for years. Even today, the shot is required for obtaining citizenship, which means that the mandates still survive in some form.
This mad rush to force the shot on everyone stems from a long history of belief that vaccines can only control a disease if everyone gets them. That was true of Smallpox and perhaps polio and measles. But that perception entirely hinges on the sterilizing quality of the vaccines themselves, which these new shots certainly did not have. Therefore there was no basis for the mandates at all. If ever there was living proof of a madness pushed toward the irrational use of force this was it.
We still have no firm numbers on the number of people who lost their jobs or gave them up and otherwise experienced professional displacement as a result of these mandates. But certainly the numbers are in the millions. As injury reports began to pour in, it became clear that this was at least in terms of reporting the most dangerous pharmaceutical product called a vaccine issued in our lifetimes. But the companies themselves had been granted full protection from liability from harm, which is to say that there was nothing that the victims could do.
This is the third anniversary of the executive order that unleashed this whole divisive and destructive campaign. A painful anniversary it is. For many people, and for a whole generation, this was the equivalent of the conscription mandates in the Vietnam War, a move against the civilian population that fundamentally disrupted the social contract and shattered the trust we once had in official institutions. It will never be forgotten by those who lived through it.
And yet even now, we wonder what lessons have been learned, if any.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown.
Jeffrey A.Tucker’s interview with David Leis on Leaders on the Frontier can be seen here.
From the Brownstone Institute
A walk through a dozen convenience stores in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, says a lot about how US nicotine policy actually works. Only about one in eight nicotine-pouch products for sale is legal. The rest are unauthorized—but they’re not all the same. Some are brightly branded, with uncertain ingredients, not approved by any Western regulator, and clearly aimed at impulse buyers. Others—like Sweden’s NOAT—are the opposite: muted, well-made, adult-oriented, and already approved for sale in Europe.
Yet in the United States, NOAT has been told to stop selling. In September 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the company a warning letter for offering nicotine pouches without marketing authorization. That might make sense if the products were dangerous, but they appear to be among the safest on the market: mild flavors, low nicotine levels, and recyclable paper packaging. In Europe, regulators consider them acceptable. In America, they’re banned. The decision looks, at best, strange—and possibly arbitrary.
What the Market Shows
My October 2025 audit was straightforward. I visited twelve stores and recorded every distinct pouch product visible for sale at the counter. If the item matched one of the twenty ZYN products that the FDA authorized in January, it was counted as legal. Everything else was counted as illegal.
Two of the stores told me they had recently received FDA letters and had already removed most illegal stock. The other ten stores were still dominated by unauthorized products—more than 93 percent of what was on display. Across all twelve locations, about 12 percent of products were legal ZYN, and about 88 percent were not.
The illegal share wasn’t uniform. Many of the unauthorized products were clearly high-nicotine imports with flashy names like Loop, Velo, and Zimo. These products may be fine, but some are probably high in contaminants, and a few often with very high nicotine levels. Others were subdued, plainly meant for adult users. NOAT was a good example of that second group: simple packaging, oat-based filler, restrained flavoring, and branding that makes no effort to look “cool.” It’s the kind of product any regulator serious about harm reduction would welcome.
Enforcement Works
To the FDA’s credit, enforcement does make a difference. The two stores that received official letters quickly pulled their illegal stock. That mirrors the agency’s broader efforts this year: new import alerts to detain unauthorized tobacco products at the border (see also Import Alert 98-06), and hundreds of warning letters to retailers, importers, and distributors.
But effective enforcement can’t solve a supply problem. The list of legal nicotine-pouch products is still extremely short—only a narrow range of ZYN items. Adults who want more variety, or stores that want to meet that demand, inevitably turn to gray-market suppliers. The more limited the legal catalog, the more the illegal market thrives.
Why the NOAT Decision Appears Bizarre
The FDA’s own actions make the situation hard to explain. In January 2025, it authorized twenty ZYN products after finding that they contained far fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes and could help adult smokers switch. That was progress. But nine months later, the FDA has approved nothing else—while sending a warning letter to NOAT, arguably the least youth-oriented pouch line in the world.
The outcome is bad for legal sellers and public health. ZYN is legal; a handful of clearly risky, high-nicotine imports continue to circulate; and a mild, adult-market brand that meets European safety and labeling rules is banned. Officially, NOAT’s problem is procedural—it lacks a marketing order. But in practical terms, the FDA is punishing the very design choices it claims to value: simplicity, low appeal to minors, and clean ingredients.
This approach also ignores the differences in actual risk. Studies consistently show that nicotine pouches have far fewer toxins than cigarettes and far less variability than many vapes. The biggest pouch concerns are uneven nicotine levels and occasional traces of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, depending on manufacturing quality. The serious contamination issues—heavy metals and inconsistent dosage—belong mostly to disposable vapes, particularly the flood of unregulated imports from China. Treating all “unauthorized” products as equally bad blurs those distinctions and undermines proportional enforcement.
A Better Balance: Enforce Upstream, Widen the Legal Path
My small Montgomery County survey suggests a simple formula for improvement.
First, keep enforcement targeted and focused on suppliers, not just clerks. Warning letters clearly change behavior at the store level, but the biggest impact will come from auditing distributors and importers, and stopping bad shipments before they reach retail shelves.
Second, make compliance easy. A single-page list of authorized nicotine-pouch products—currently the twenty approved ZYN items—should be posted in every store and attached to distributor invoices. Point-of-sale systems can block barcodes for anything not on the list, and retailers could affirm, once a year, that they stock only approved items.
Third, widen the legal lane. The FDA launched a pilot program in September 2025 to speed review of new pouch applications. That program should spell out exactly what evidence is needed—chemical data, toxicology, nicotine release rates, and behavioral studies—and make timely decisions. If products like NOAT meet those standards, they should be authorized quickly. Legal competition among adult-oriented brands will crowd out the sketchy imports far faster than enforcement alone.
The Bottom Line
Enforcement matters, and the data show it works—where it happens. But the legal market is too narrow to protect consumers or encourage innovation. The current regime leaves a few ZYN products as lonely legal islands in a sea of gray-market pouches that range from sensible to reckless.
The FDA’s treatment of NOAT stands out as a case study in inconsistency: a quiet, adult-focused brand approved in Europe yet effectively banned in the US, while flashier and riskier options continue to slip through. That’s not a public-health victory; it’s a missed opportunity.
If the goal is to help adult smokers move to lower-risk products while keeping youth use low, the path forward is clear: enforce smartly, make compliance easy, and give good products a fair shot. Right now, we’re doing the first part well—but failing at the second and third. It’s time to fix that.
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million Americans each year. Everyone knows it, including the Food and Drug Administration. Yet while the most lethal nicotine product remains on sale in every gas station, the FDA continues to block or delay far safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.
Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.
In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.
Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.
Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.
The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards.
The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.
The agency claims that this heavy-handed approach protects kids. But youth pouch use in the US remains very low—about 1.5 percent of high-school students according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey—while nearly 30 million American adults still smoke. Denying safer products to millions of addicted adults because a tiny fraction of teens might experiment is the opposite of public-health logic.
There’s a better path. The FDA should base its decisions on science, not fear. If a product dramatically reduces exposure to harmful chemicals, meets strict packaging and marketing standards, and enforces Tobacco 21 age verification, it should be allowed on the market. Population-level effects can be monitored afterward through real-world data on switching and youth use. That’s how drug and vaccine regulation already works.
Sweden’s evidence shows the results of a pragmatic approach: a near-smoke-free society achieved through consumer choice, not coercion. The FDA’s own approval of ZYN proves that such products can meet its legal standard for protecting public health. The next step is consistency—apply the same rules to everyone.
Combustion, not nicotine, is the killer. Until the FDA acts on that simple truth, it will keep protecting the cigarette industry it was supposed to regulate.
Author
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