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CBS REPORTS ON ‘SHFTY’ DEAL ON BOP NICOTINE POUCHES
Nice deal if you can get it. CBS News reported last Friday that a Florida company that was established only three months ago won what CBS called “an unusual and potentially lucrative deal to be the only business permitted to stock the commissaries of the Bureau of Prisons’ 118 institutions with flavored nicotine pouches.”
The brand of 6-mg pouches, called “mindSHFT,” is not authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the US, according to a review of FDA data.
The BOP never formally issued a request for bids on a provider for nicotine pouches (which would have been a public document). In fact, CBS reported, the agency does not even have a signed contract with mindSHFT. Despite this, BOP trust fund chief, Adam Morrow, informed all federal prison commissaries on July 21 that the sale of nicotine pouches “has been authorized,” and the sole approved vendor would be SHFT Holdings Enterprise LLC, the company providing the pouches.
After an anonymous federal employee emailed the DOJ IG and AG Blanche last week to raise concerns, a senior BOP official last Thursday ordered all prisons to stop buying and stocking mindSHFT, according to a Sept 3 internal memo reviewed by CBS News. Federal law prohibits the sale and marketing of nicotine and tobacco-related products that are not authorized by the FDA.
SHFT Holdings Enterprise LLC was incorporated in Florida one week after the BOP published a nationwide “request for information” on May 15 that asked about vendors who could produce “FDA-authorized nicotine pouch products” to sell to federal prisoners. A company spokesman said the company was formed in response to the BOP public notice, but it registered its domain name – https://shftholdings.com — on May 7, the same day the BOP amended its Trust Fund manual to permit the sale of nicotine pouches in commissaries.
The BOP recommended that commissaries buy three tins of mindSHFT for every inmate, which would have amounted to 459,000 units, or about $3.24 million. The BOP was buying tins at $6.99 per tin and selling them to inmates for $9.10. One source told CBS News the tins had been “selling like hotcakes.”
BOP accused SHFT Holdings of telling it the pouches were FDA-approved. SHFT denies having said that. No one has yet determined how SHFT got the contract to the exclusion of other vendors.
A ZYN 10-pack of 6 mg nicotine pouches (150 pouches) is advertised online for $44.90, or about 30 cents a pouch. The SHFT pouches cost inmates about 45 cents a unit.
CBS News, Bureau of Prisons faces scrutiny over startup’s exclusive deal to sell non-FDA-authorized nicotine pouches to prisoners (September 4, 2026)
BOP, PS 4500.12, Trust Fund Manual (May 7, 2026)
~ Thomas L. Root