Another week, another outright assault on nicotine pouches. Oh, and truth, basic reasoning, and decent journalism have taken a kicking, too. Let’s take a look at the Huffington Post on Nicotine Pouches.
The article
HuffPost isn’t exactly known for balance. It’s a left/progressive leaning digital outlet that has drifted into desperate clickbait sensationalism a bit too often for comfort in recent years, meaning the publication has become something of a joke in many quarters.
Well, the laughing isn’t about to stop thanks to the newest article from its Wellness section, titled, “This Controversial Substance Is Suddenly Being Called A Health Product By RFK Jr. — Doctors Aren't Celebrating.”
What HuffPost gets wrong
Anyone familiar with nicotine product coverage in the news will read that headline and know one thing for sure: I bet RFK never called nicotine pouches a “health product.” To most reasonable people, a health product is intended to promote, maintain, or improve health or well-being. What RFK did say in a YouTube interview is this:
“It’s infinitely preferential to smoking. I think the … nicotine pouches are probably the safest way to consume nicotine. Vapes are second, but the thing that we really want to get away from is cigarettes …”
Now, you’d have to be a complete moron to read what he said and assume he’s saying that nicotine pouches are a health product. But, to be fair to the author, this could be the fault of the editor and not their intention. So, surely the rest of the article will be better? No, no, it will not be. Here is the first line of the article.
Yeah, there is a reason why “cancer” might come to mind. It’s because people like the author keep on repeating this entirely debunked myth, thus keeping it in circulation. Per the NHS and Cancer Research UK, nicotine does not cause cancer.
Next, the author mentions that wellness influencers and social media influencers are stating that “nicotine has health benefits, cognitive benefits, can boost energy and promote relaxation. The problem with cigarettes, the influencers say, isn’t the nicotine ― it’s the tobacco.”
Despite casting these statements in shade, there is a fair amount of data to back up their veracity. Still, the author calls in some experts to take a look.
The “expert” view
The author first speaks to Frank Leone, director of the Comprehensive Smoking Treatment Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Leone states that he feels nicotine gum and patches are “safe.” Before saying:
Now, there are a few big problems here.
Firstly, while synthetic nicotine is growing in popularity, most vapes and pouches still use tobacco-derived nicotine. It’s still overwhelmingly the dominant form of nicotine in safer products. Some shop surveys suggest synthetic nicotine makes up just 2% of the US market.
Secondly, the claim that “synthetic nicotine is optimized to be absorbed and delivered to the brain very rapidly, creating the problems of addiction” is fantastical. What Leone doesn’t seem to understand is that alternative nicotine products have been working to make vapes and pouches hit the bloodstream quickly precisely because getting closer to the rapid onset of cigarettes will make these alternative products easier to adopt for current smokers. A glance at the pharmacokinetics shows cigarettes peak fastest, vapes second, with pouches a distant third.
Finally, the article does its best to suggest nicotine could cause cancer. It’s the usual “we don’t know enough”, with Dr Pamela Ling, who is director of the University of California, San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, suggesting that cancer takes a long time to develop and many of these high-dose nicotine products (vapes, pouches) are just a few years old. Vapes have been around for over 20 years.
Final thoughts
There are too many mistakes in this article, particularly from Dr Leone. Additionally, despite the author being told there is no evidence that nicotine causes cancer, they still open the article by implying it does. Overall, this piece will do little for HuffPost’s steadily declining reputation.
