A new nicotine product is becoming increasingly popular with young people and parents will not be able to tell if their child is using it because they are effectively invisible.
Nicotine pouches – called Zyns, snus or small lip pads – have become fashionable thanks to social media.
They look like small tea bags filled with nicotine, with flavors like mint, bubble gum and mango.
The nicotine is placed discreetly between your lip and gums and is absorbed directly into the bloodstream.
They look like small tea bags filled with nicotine, with flavors like mint, bubble gum and mango.
Matilda, 18, and Jacob, 20, have both tried pouches.
“A lot of people were doing it in high school and that’s where I initially tried it,” Matilda told A Current Affair.
Jacob said the bags could be pulled out discreetly.
“People don’t really blink at it, instead of seeing clouds of clouds coming out,” he said.
“A lot of my friends, especially at college, do it quite a bit.”
Becky Freeman, an associate professor of public health at the University of Sydney who has studied vape use among teenagers, says she is concerned about the pouches.
“The whole point is for it to be discreet, smell nice and get you hooked on nicotine,” she said.
‘Bags are constantly mentioned by children in the focus groups.
“They buy them at tobacconists, they buy them online, so they’re kind of the new trendy thing.”
She said they were not legal products in Australia.
Chewing tobacco was banned in Australia in 1991.
Jacob, 20, has tried nicotine pouches. Image: A current case
Matilda 18, first tried the bags in high school. Image: A current case
But tobacconists say sales of nicotine pouches are booming.
“It’s mostly online, so anyone can get it online, but we brought it to the stores because a lot of people were asking for it,” an employee said.
Two of the largest tobacco companies, Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, have even created their own brands.
In 2022, the Therapeutic Goods Administration seized fewer than 110,000 units of nicotine pouches.
Last year that was almost 3.5 million units.
So far, the federal Ministry of Health said around 5.1 million units had been seized this year, as well as 168,000 cans and pouches had already been seized.
Tobacco manufacturers say sales of nicotine pouches are booming
Chemical toxicologist Jody Morgan from the University of Wollongong will soon launch an investigation into the bags to learn more about their toxicity.
She said a medium strength nicotine pouch contained about 10mg of nicotine.
An average cigarette contains about 12 mg of cigarettes, but smokers inhale only part of it.
“You only absorb about 1.5 mg of that because most of it actually burns off when you light the cigarette,” Dr. Morgan said.
Because the market is unregulated in Australia, pouches have been found with twenty times the strength of a cigarette.
‘Prolonged use of this can cause gum problems, especially gum ulcers. You can get open sores that don’t heal,” Dr. Morgan said.
‘It can cause quite a burning sensation.’
Philip Morris, the maker of Zyns, is facing a lawsuit in the US over claims the product is addictive and harmful to young people.
The federal Department of Health said the government is “aware of and concerned about the increasing number of nicotine pouches being advertised and supplied in Australia.”
“Targeting children is particularly concerning given the public health risks of nicotine,” a spokesperson said.