Media Watch 14 February 2025

 

In November 2024, Penn State University released a remarkable finding about social media. After analysing 35 million social media posts between 2017 and 2020, the researchers found that “around 75% of the shares were made without the posters clicking the link first.” [1]

That’s right; for every four posts that are shared on social media, only one person actually reads the article. Headlines are what drive virality. More worryingly, they’re also what shapes public opinion.

In light of these findings, it’s worth taking a look at two recent BBC articles on illicit nicotine pouches from the 5th and 7th of February. They are:

Everyone is in the clicks business now. Though I’m sure the BBC likes to think they’re above the fray, these headlines tell a different story.

Let’s take a look.

Is the presence of nicotine pouches a cause for alarm?

In the article on the “alarming” rise of illicit nicotine pouches, the author states that “Trading Standards teams in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Dorset have made more than 1,500 seizures in the past year.” Further down, they clarify that they mean 900 packs in Oxfordshire and 844 in Dorset.

So, this is the scale of the problem we are dealing with: around 1744 pouches with a “street value” of around £9000.

The HMRC estimates that illicit cigarettes cause revenue losses of almost £3 billion each year.[2] These are complex criminal enterprises that see shipping containers of illicit products arrive on these shores. Illegal nicotine pouches are a rounding error in comparison.

The rest of the article really strains to cast pouches as a public danger. They wheel out a vape shop owner who tells us a pouch made his gums bleed. He also informs us that his friend’s daughter became sick after using a pouch.

They also quote Hazel Cheeseman, the increasingly ideological Chief Executive of Action on Smoking Health (ASH). She pulls out her well-thumbed Tobacco Control playbook to tell us about Big Tobacco’s playbook. The fact that Cheeseman, little more than a marionette for well-capitalised neo-puritanism, is in such an influential position is nothing short of terrifying.

May cause seizures

The next article focuses on Kent, where 4,000 cans have been seized in a year. They quote Robert Sidebottom, who is the managing director of vaping regulator Arcus Compliance. He suggests that “the impact of overdosing of nicotine is heart palpitations, sickness, headaches. It can be lethal. It’s unlikely, but there have been incidents in other countries where they have resulted in fatalities.”

Despite extensive searches over the years, I’ve yet to come across a nicotine pouch fatality. In fact, there is such a supply and demand problem for a nicotine-caused death that hoax articles blaming vapes or pouches are much more common.

I’m all for underlining the dangers of products, but I think people should be careful about making claims that a product is lethal, especially when vapes and pouches are already under attack from malicious people who play hard and fast with the truth.

Final thoughts

There are millions of smokers in the UK and millions more people who are likely to use nicotine. There’s not much that we can do about human predisposition to use nicotine, so the pragmatic approach is to encourage these people to choose the healthiest option, which is undeniably nicotine pouches.

Journalist researching with documents, nicotine pouches, and glowing computer screen.

The BBC, through its pointed headlines and unbalanced reporting, is discrediting healthier alternatives to smoking. If this is what public service media looks like, it’s no surprise that 500,000 households cancelled their TV licence last year. Let’s hope that 2025 brings more thoughtful, considered, and fair coverage for pouches.