Editor’s Note
This article highlights the ongoing challenge of youth nicotine use, as new products like nicotine pearls and snus emerge alongside e-cigarettes. As policymakers consider bans on specific items like “Puff,” the evolving landscape demands continued vigilance and updated strategies to protect adolescents from addiction.
The ACT-Alliance Against Tobacco has issued an alert concerning tobacco products used by 13-16 year olds. Among them is the Puff, whose ban is to be discussed in the National Assembly in the coming weeks. But young people are also turning to new products like nicotine pearls or snus.
A year after a first alert, the ACT-Alliance Against Tobacco conducted a study among 13-16 year olds to measure their use of various tobacco and nicotine products. While cigarettes and e-cigarettes remain the most used products by adolescents, the collective highlights that younger people are also turning to other, equally addictive offerings.
This is the case with Puff, cited among the most used tobacco and nicotine products by adolescents and pre-adolescents, and already used by 15% of this population. In parallel, 15% of young people have already smoked a cigarette and 16% have tried rechargeable e-cigarettes.
The use of this product, whose sale is prohibited to minors, would also be a gateway to other tobacco products. Indeed, according to the survey, 47% of adolescents began their initiation to nicotine via this product and 23% of them then turned to other tobacco and nicotine products.
In the same document, the collective also alerts about the use of other products that adolescents are turning to. 21% of 13-16 year olds have already heard of nicotine pearls, 19% of them, of nicotine pouches. Among those who know these products, nearly one in ten young people have already tried them.
Another product whose consumption is increasing among the youngest: snus. 18% of 13-16 year olds know what it is and 7% say they have already used it, even though the marketing of this sucking tobacco is prohibited in Europe, except in Sweden and Norway. The Alliance Against Tobacco is concerned about increasing consumption since the proportion of young people declaring they have already used it is up compared to a previous survey conducted last year.
In the ACT-Alliance Against Tobacco press release, the collective’s president, Loïc Josseran, therefore calls for the ban on Puff, which must be voted on in the National Assembly in the coming weeks, but also for broader regulation of these various products.
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Aurélie LOEK