Education program launched to warn teens about nicotine pouches

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Nicotine pouches or lip pillows are growing in popularity with young Australians.  The small, pre-filled permeable bags contain nicotine and sweeteners and are placed between the lip and gum and dissolved in the mouth. Critics say they've filled the gap left by banned vaping products and are having devastating health impacts on our teens.

Transcript

00:00So some preliminary data that's coming out from the last couple of years, as we've seen

00:05the rise in Australia, some data is telling us that as much as three quarters of young

00:10people are aware of them, they know that they're out there.

00:13And in even some studies done out of, say, the University of Melbourne, just a couple

00:17of years ago, was finding that in their sample of young people, about one in five had actually

00:22tried them at least once.

00:23And I can say from my own personal experience, when I go out to schools and I scan and I

00:28interrogate certain things, I've actually run into a few cohorts of high schoolers

00:32who are more familiar with nicotine pouches than they are with the effects of, say, alcohol

00:37or even cannabis.

00:38Okay.

00:38You speak of young people here.

00:40What ages are you talking about, James?

00:43So if we're talking about the formal data that we're referring to in those specific statements,

00:47anything from 16 to the early 30s, on the other hand, you go into any high school, you start

00:52talking to seventh and eighth graders, they are aware they exist.

00:56We can't pretend that they aren't seeing them, that they aren't talking about them or that

01:00they aren't being told about them or even exposed to them from their older peers.

01:03Okay.

01:04A couple of questions in all of that.

01:05How are they firstly accessing these products, which I believe are banned by the TGA?

01:12Absolutely.

01:13So the TGA covers nicotine products in the laws and the regulations around them.

01:17The only exceptions really are around certain vapes and cigarettes, which means blanket ban on

01:24nicotine pouches is there by default.

01:25You're not legally allowed to get them here.

01:28However, you weren't ever legally allowed to buy a vape if you were a teenager at any

01:32stage of the vape bans.

01:33So we know that just making them illegal doesn't get them out of the way.

01:37The two common places that a young person would be accessing them would either be in

01:41person at a tobacconist, sort of an under the counter purchase that shouldn't be happening,

01:46or an online retailer.

01:47Simply Google nicotine pouches, buy online Australia.

01:50And the entire first page of results on Google are just awash with these dropship pump and

01:56dump stores to offload nicotine pouches and then disappear.

01:59Okay.

01:59So for parents watching at home who might not have heard of this before, can you explain

02:04what impact these nicotine patches are having on young people's health?

02:08So nicotine pouches up front, because of the nicotine content, present a risk of nicotine

02:14addiction.

02:15And interestingly, they use synthetic nicotine rather than what we call free-based nicotine

02:20that you would find in tobacco leaves, which actually allows these pouches to have a higher

02:24dose than they would normally be able to get away with with the natural stuff, meaning that

02:29young people could be exposed to higher doses of nicotine per pouch before feeling any irritation

02:33from using it.

02:35So that's problem number one.

02:37The second thing is that if we're talking health risks, and we're talking in the short

02:40term, some people experience nausea, headaches, vomiting, or burning.

02:45Some have even experienced seizures in the most unfortunate cases.

02:48But to me, the big danger here is that the long-term health effects of these products are

02:54quite frankly unknown.

02:55The research doesn't exist yet for us in a state that we would like it to.

03:00We've seen this product now in a similar trajectory to vapes.

03:03Be released to a market, largely untested, the chemical ingredient lists being mostly or

03:09completely unavailable, targeted primarily at a group of vulnerable, underage people under

03:15the guise of being helpful or harmless.

03:17And are they being marketed, you know, as sweet flavours, like the vapes were getting in

03:24trouble for doing when they were a problem?

03:29Absolutely.

03:29Same thing.

03:30It's almost one-to-one the tactics.

03:32You won't find a boring steel tin of nicotine pouches.

03:36They always have to be citrus bang or chili jalapeno, or even just referencing something

03:41as mundane sounding as mint or menthol or eucalyptus flavours.

03:45Okay.

03:45So the colouring of the packaging, the flavouring, and the way it's talked about on social media,

03:50very similar strategies.

03:50Two really brief questions.

03:52I mean, we know that vapes were originally designed for harm minimisation to move people

03:58away from combustible cigarettes to vapes, which were, you know, through your doctor,

04:03through a script, etc.

04:04Is there any suggestion that these pouches are for harm minimisation to move people off

04:09combustible cigarettes?

04:11Absolutely.

04:12The initial play from the tobacco industry would always be to be harm minimisation, not

04:17just a leisure product.

04:18In fact, if you look on a larger timescale, the tobacco industry doesn't want you to think

04:23that they're leisure products.

04:24They want you to think they're the good guys.

04:26They gave you vapes as medicine for your cigarettes.

04:29Now they're giving you nicotine pouches as medicine for your vapes.

04:32And we, for some reason, just seem to take that at face value.

04:35Okay.

04:36You're calling for urgent education around this.

04:38What would you like to see introduced?

04:40In terms of inside the school, I want us to be stepping away from punitive, fear-based,

04:47don't do this or you'll die type messaging, and instead exploring the product from the

04:51ground up from multiple angles, not just health, but also where's it coming from, who's

04:56making it, who's trying to sell it to you, what's their ultimate motivation.

04:59And for anybody watching who's a parent and they want to start talking to this about

05:02their kids, the best thing you could do right now is that once this segment's over,

05:06turn to your kids and go, nicotine pouches.

05:09Do you even know what they are?

05:10What do you know about them?

05:11And get the ball rolling.

05:12You'll thank yourself later in the long run.

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