Zyn pouches are the most recent nicotine craze on this planet of cigarette substitutes. They’re touted as a panacea for dependancy to smoking and vaping. Philip Morris boasts promoting greater than 130 million containers within the first quarter of this yr. However well being consultants and authorities officers need to crackdown on the sale of those pouches.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There is a new nicotine craze that has some mother and father and well being officers involved. It is known as Zyn. That is the title of a well-liked model of flavored nicotine pouches. They’re utterly tobacco free, and followers cannot get sufficient. However critics level to potential dangers of the favored product. NPR’s Lola Murti studies.
LOLA MURTI, BYLINE: A couple of issues to find out about Zyn. First, it is spelled Z-Y-N. It is from a former Swedish firm that Philip Morris purchased two years in the past, and its plastic packaging is replete with brilliant, contemporary labels.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONTAINER LID FLIPPING OPEN)
MURTI: Flip open the puck-shaped container. It resembles Ice Breakers mints – inside, 15 little pouches that give an intense burst of nicotine if you pack a lip.
JOSH HADDEN: It lasts, like, quarter-hour – the preliminary head rush.
MURTI: That is Josh Hadden, a senior at Texas A&M. He tells me he began utilizing Zyn a pair years in the past. It was a technique to give up vaping, and he likes it.
HADDEN: You continue to really feel, like, a bit of buzz you could by no means get from vaping.
MURTI: The nicotine releases instantly into the bloodstream. And higher but, says Hadden, the pouch is discrete – no smoke, no spitting, no stigma.
HADDEN: Zyn is – like, you are able to do it throughout class, and you are able to do it strolling round. And it is so nice.
MURTI: And faculty college students are flocking to the pouches. A part of the attraction – buzz from Zynfluencers (ph) like Tucker Carlson, AKA Tucker Carlzyn (ph), who saturates social media and podcasts with messages of simply how cool this product is. After which there are the flavors – 10 in all, from citrus to cinnamon.
HADDEN: I just like the peppermint ones, and I just like the espresso ones. And should you put them collectively, you get, like, a bit of peppermint espresso drink, which is at all times enjoyable.
MURTI: Enjoyable? Possibly. Nevertheless it seems it is a cheaper behavior than vaping. Nicotine pouches have been round for a decade, launched as an alternative choice to tobacco. Immediately, Zyn dominates the market. Again within the spring, there have been reported shortages of the product. And by summer season, it was worse, all a results of Philip Morris voluntarily stopping on-line Zyn gross sales within the U.S. Questions had been raised about minors getting the flavored pouches.
HADDEN: Now I can discover it once more. It is simply dearer. However I do not actually care.
MURTI: And to fulfill the rising demand, Philip Morris is constructing a brand new manufacturing unit. The corporate says gross sales are up. In simply the primary three months of the yr, it offered 132 million cans of Zyn. That is up 80% from final yr. However Zyn nonetheless has a bumpy highway forward. Congress and the FDA have shared large considerations about its addictiveness and its enchantment to minors. Twenty-one-year-old Josh Hadden, who began utilizing to give up vaping, admits he is one of many many customers who can not seem to give up Zyn.
Do you are feeling hooked on Zyn now?
HADDEN: Sure, 100%. I’ve a Zyn in proper now.
MURTI: Whereas dependancy is a really actual concern, Dr. Tory Spindle, a behavioral psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Drugs, says it is a greater various to smoking and vaping.
TORY SPINDLE: I do not suppose I might assist an outright ban on them, however I do suppose that we should be extra cautious with how they’re marketed.
MURTI: Philip Morris utilized for the fitting to market Zyn again in 2020. That software – it is nonetheless pending with the FDA. So for now, Zyn continues to be offered within the U.S.
Lola Murti, NPR Information.
(SOUNDBITE OF KENDRICK LAMAR SONG, “B****, DON’T KILL MY VIBE”)
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