Teen Tobacco Use Hits 25-Year Low, But Nicotine Pouches Rise

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tobacco use is down to a 25-year low among American teenagers.  The CDC said recently that 2.25 million middle and high school students reported tobacco use in the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey, down from 2.8 million in 2023.  The CDC also said that the progress is largely due to a sizable drop in e-cigarette use.
This year, 1.63 million teens reported e-cigarette use, down from 2.13 million a year ago.  Cigarette smoking reached the lowest level ever recorded by the survey at just 1.4% of students.  Use of tobacco products in any form is unsafe, and nearly all tobacco use begins during youth, the CDC said.  Youth e-cigarette use declined to the lowest level in a decade.  But e-cigarettes remained the most commonly used tobacco product (5.9%) among teens.  Nicotine pouches, like Zyn, became the second-most commonly used tobacco product among youth (1.8%), followed by cigarettes (1.4%), cigars (1.2%), smokeless tobacco (1.2%), other oral nicotine products (1.2%), heated tobacco products (0.8%), hookahs (0.7%) and pipe tobacco (0.5%).  The director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products said in a news release that we’re “headed in the right direction” but “can’t take our foot off the gas.”  Another article covered the increased use of nicotine pouches.  Zyn is a brand of pouches produced by a subsidiary of Philip Morris International that last year sold Americans about 350 million cans of the product.  The packets, which do not contain tobacco, are frequently discussed as a potential smoking-cessation tool, though some Zyn users were never regular cigarette smokers or vape users to begin with.  Some say they have gotten hooked on the nicotine buzz delivered by Zyn, which comes in flavors like wintergreen, cinnamon, and chill.  A single pouch is intended to last around 30 minutes.  Some teenagers say they first learned of the product on TikTok, where a coterie of aspiring influencers has gone viral with videos featuring Zyn.  The long-term effects of Zyn are not clear, but nicotine is an addictive substance that can raise blood pressure and spike a user’s heart rates.  Here's the link to the Zyn article: Zyn, Popular Nicotine Pouches, Are Redefining a Masculine Archetype - The New York Times.  Here's the link to the tobacco use article: Tobacco use by American kids down to 25-year low (baltimoresun.com)