As the fight against e-cigarettes continues, a new type of nicotine product is gaining popularity among young people, and parents have no way of knowing if their kids are using it because they’re essentially invisible.
Nicotine pouches (called Zyns or snus) have become fashionable thanks to social media. They look like small tea bags filled with nicotine and come in flavors such as mint, bubble gum and mango. Nicotine is carefully placed between the lips and gums and then absorbed directly into the bloodstream. Matilda, 18, and Jacob, 20, have both tried using an ostomy bag. Matilda told A Current Affair: “In high school a lot of people were doing it and that’s where I started experimenting.”
Becky Freeman, associate professor of public health at the University of Sydney, who has been studying e-cigarette use among teenagers, said she was concerned about the swatches.
“The goal is to make it unobtrusive, fragrant and get you hooked on nicotine,” she said. “They’re buying it from tobacco shops, they’re buying it online, it’s a new thing.”
She said the products were not legal in Australia. Just like e-cigarettes (which are currently banned from import and sold illegally), small bags of e-cigarettes fall into the same category.
But while tobacconists sell e-cigarettes, they also say sales of nicotine packs are booming. “The product is mainly sold online, so anyone can buy it from the Internet, but we brought it into the store because a lot of people were asking about it,” a staff member said.
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