Nicotine pouch a focus for Mass. youth against tobacco use. What is the pouch?

Editor's note: A job title was corrected in this story on May 16, 2024.

Young advocates from across the state gathered on Beacon Hill recently in recognition of Kick Butts Day, a national day to voice against tobacco use, especially within the youth community. One of their biggest concerns this year is new emerging nicotine products.

In 2019, the state’s Public Health Council approved new regulations that made Massachusetts the first state in the country to restrict the sale of flavored tobacco products, but Hannah Collette, one of the members of The 84 Movement statewide leadership team and a senior from Leicester High School, said nicotine pouches “have been able to sneak around policies that have been set in stone.”

Nicotine pouch is a focus

“One of our biggest focuses of Kick Butts Day 2024 was definitely the nicotine pouch, which is a new product that’s been seen,” she said. “Companies have created a lot more products that are kind of loopholes in the flavor ban, such as non-menthol products and nicotine pouches, just because they don’t fall under some of the tobacco laws and policies set in stone.”

According to the National Institute of Health, the nicotine pouch is an oral pouch containing nicotine powder instead of tobacco leaf. Pouches are available in flavors but haven’t been banned.

Allyson Perron, government relations director and senior regional lead for the American Heart Association, said that lower prices could increase the accessibility of these products to young people. She added that tobacco product taxes have remained unchanged since 2013, so they are working on increasing taxes to close the loophole.

Making products more expensive, less available to kids

“When products are more expensive, it makes it harder for kids to buy them,” she said. “If they're cheaper for kids to buy, then that's where they'll gravitate towards. So make sure that the price is high enough to dissuade them from using them.”

Carly Caminiti, director of training and capacity building at Health Resources in Action and program director at The 84 Movement, said these products that have come out are targeting young people.

“Young people are constantly a target of the tobacco and vaping industries. When one product is either restricted or banned, they come up with another product that is going to hook young people,” she said. “The goal of that industry is to addict people for their whole life.”

Marketing as 'safer alternative'

Perron said tobacco companies tend to market those products as a “safer alternative.”

“We know that is not necessarily true,” she said. “They are not FDA-approved as a cessation device. So they should not be able to be marketed or promoted as that.”

Elise Stevens, director of the Center for Tobacco Treatment Training and Research, said youth still have a developing brain, and nicotine can affect that.

“They can have a lot of the same negative health effects of using nicotine in adolescence like the disruption of the formation of brain circuits that control attention learning,” she said. “And again, it makes you more susceptible to be addicted. And then it's obviously very hard to quit.”

Collette said smokeless products are “fairly new,” and it would take time for people to realize how harmful these new products can be.

“This will definitely take an impact on a lot of youth and their brains as they continue to grow older. But I honestly think that we won't see the complete full effects of nicotine and addiction until these products have been around for a while, and youth my age who have used them grow up a little bit more,” she said.

Use of e-cigarettes

Stevens added that currently, the number of youth using e-cigarettes is still relatively high. Mental health issues can be a reason behind that, but it can lead to a “cyclical relationship.”

“They might use e-cigarettes to cope with mental health issues. But then we know that vaping and nicotine can cause more mental health issues. It's sort of this cycle of continuing to use it to fix the problem, but it's also creating more of the problem,” she said.

Collette said it’s important for them to continue to meet legislators so that they can make decisions and create new policies that would benefit the health of the public.

“Tobacco and vaping is a real issue and I think it's only gotten worse over the past few years. I just look forward for youth having more opportunity to speak with our legislators and just let them know what's going on in our communities because they honestly don't know unless we can share with them what is going on,” she said. “So that they can formulate new legislation to pass.”

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Tobacco, vaping is 'real issue.' Mass. youth want to talk to lawmakers