Just a year after he became chief executive officer of Philip Morris International Inc., Jacek Olczak swooped on rival nicotine pouch maker Swedish Match in a $16 billion deal.

Olczak wanted the company’s vast U.S. distribution network and popular Zyn nicotine pouches, which are about the size of a chiclet and meant to be placed between a user’s gum and upper lip. Hailed by some as a product that can give users “unstoppable force,” demand for Zyn is now so great that the company was on track to sell 580 million tins in the U.S. last year, up from 385 million a year earlier.

It’s all part of Olczak’s plan as he charts a way for the world’s largest tobacco company to generate two-thirds of its revenue from smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes by 2030.

The problem?

It’s becoming clear that the huge wave in popularity for Zyn is also sweeping up kids. There are already an estimated half-million underage users in the U.S. who are developing a taste for nicotine — a highly addictive, toxic chemical. Philip Morris was fined $1.2 million last month for sales in Washington, D.C., of pouches made with banned flavors, which are seen as more attractive to children.

Olczak is clear that the tobacco company may never be able to stop kids from trying its products. “The unfortunate thing is that with young people, there is an element of experimentation,” he said at the company’s headquarters in Switzerland. “It doesn’t matter which country. This age is about experimentation, and they will experiment with the things the adults are doing.”

His own 16-year-old son is curious about nicotine, he said. “You have to understand that ‘zero’ will not exist.”

For Philip Morris, which reported $35.2 billion in net annual sales last year, the company is at a precipice: navigating the potential huge upside in the U.S. could depend on its ability to prove that it’s not hooking a new generation of young people on nicotine.

The cautionary example here is Juul, the high strength e-cigarette brand accused in multiple lawsuits of targeting underage users through stylishly-designed vaporizers and advertisements on youth-focused websites. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned Juul from marketing its products in 2022, and rescinded the order last year.

Olczak, 59, insists the marketing of Zyn is “day and night” compared to Juul, pointing to his company’s focus on age verification. Still, a quick search on TikTok turns up a stream of videos promoting the pouches.

The CEO maintains that Philip Morris has never paid for influencer promotion. The company is “very careful about which audiences we talk with,” he said.

With sales climbing, the FDA has begun to crack down, penalizing retailers caught selling to minors, and sending warning letters to online sellers offering unauthorized flavors of Zyn products. The regulator says that nicotine, which is addictive, can harm adolescent brain development and impair attention, learning and memory.

To Olczak’s frustration, Zyn and other nicotine pouches have not yet been authorized by the FDA — Swedish Match filed an application in March 2020 — but are permitted to stay on the market while the request is being considered. That hasn’t dampened demand: Zyn sales grew 41.4% in the third quarter in the U.S. compared to a year earlier, reaching 149.1 million cans.

Following reports of supply shortages in the U.S., Philip Morris made a fresh investment in its Owensboro, Kentucky plant, and announced plans to build a new factory in Colorado.

Other Philip Morris products are facing similar regulatory challenges.

Sales of a heated tobacco stick called IQOS are expected to decline slightly this year as a result of what Stefan Volpetti, who oversees the company’s inhaled smoke-free products, calls “short-term turbulence” related to regulation.

The European Union has banned flavored heated tobacco products.