Media Watch: NY Post in Sensationalist Article Shocker

You know you’re dealing with a low-grade moral panic when the most “terrifying” story that pressure groups can recycle is a mother and son getting a temperature and an increased heart rate from using the product.

The New York Post has taken a break from its wall-to-wall culture war reporting to spread more misinformation about nicotine pouches, revive selective research, and give voice to a PAVE volunteer, who, and I hope you’re sitting down, seems a sandwich short of a picnic.

Strap in, next stop Stupid Town.

The article

Tracy Swartz is an associate editor for entertainment news at the New York Post. However, she seems more health-focused, with a particular penchant for stories about Gwyneth Paltrow’s health advisor.

She, like many before her, can’t resist the lure of injecting gender politics in an article about nicotine pouches. This fact alone isn’t particularly egregious: Men in the US, UK, and EU are about x1.5 times more likely to smoke, and nearly x5 more likely worldwide. But, I suspect that when people like Swartz use the word “masculine”, it’s a pejorative, which for me, puts her in the league of desperate pub bores with an axe to grind against women.

Anyway, the article is essentially a greatest hits of the facile garbage that passes for articles on modern news sites. Get your bingo card out, cause we’re going to be busy.

The concerned mom

Kellie Whitehead has been making the rounds, telling anyone who’ll listen about the sickness she and her son experienced after taking a nicotine pouch. Having read her story for the umpteenth time, I can really relate to the nausea she experienced.

It’s worth noting that Whitehead is in PR. She must have some decent connections, because what else could explain such a quotidian and dull experience getting so much coverage? Are these people’s lives so bereft of meaning and consequential events that their “story” is about feeling queasy after talking a pouch?

I feel sorry for her son, James, who must know that he’s a mere prop in his oddball mum’s attention-seeking. Finally, pouches have their own version of Vapehausen-by-proxy syndrome.

The reworded press release

Too much of modern journalism is reworded press releases. I suspect that’s how we ended up listening to Whitehead’s boring non-story, and why new University of Southern California research is being shoved down our collective throats.

Swartz cites Keck University research that shows that nicotine pouch use has doubled between 2023 and 2024 among US high school students. She fails, naturally, to contextualise these findings by noting that this cohort is smoking and vaping far less. Or that any nicotine use is down among these groups.

It’s too early to know the long-term health effects

Ah, yes, the all too common refrain of “it’s too early to know the long-term health effects”. Back in the real world, nicotine is one of the most studied substances on earth; there are decades of research on snus (nicotine pouches’ close cousin), and we have biomarker data.

It might be “too early” for the authors of these cheap hit pieces, but if you don’t put in the research, it will always be too early for you, while the rest of the world has moved on to figuring out other things.

Cognitive impairments

Find me an article on nicotine, and I’ll show you someone talking about how nicotine exposure during adolescence can harm brain development, leading to difficulties with learning, memory, and attention.

What these people don’t tell you is that the data is gleaned from pumping rats and mice with industrial levels of nicotine, which they then suppose will translate into valuable insights about humans. It’s worth noting that, per this paper, only 5% of animal-tested therapeutic interventions obtain regulatory approval for human applications, which underlines the limitations of these studies.

TSNA’s

Next, Swartz frets about tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs), drawing from a widely cited German study on the subject. The highest level of TSNA detected in a pouch was 13 ng N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) per pouch. For context, a 10-cigarette-per-day habit exposes users to between 1,692 and 5,077 times higher levels of NNN.

The EU has declared ≤96.0 ng/day as safe exposure. If 13ng is the highest, most pouches will be well below that limit, meaning no reasonable user gets near the threshold. What’s more, per the cited study, around half of all pouches do not contain TSNAs.

And, as I’ve said before, I have a foolproof technique for avoiding TSNAs: not buying pouches that contain them!

According to the article, Swartz cites a study that reveals that “5.4% of teens used nicotine pouches in 2024 compared to 3% in 2023.” That’s lifetime use. The figures for 30-day use have gone up from 1.3% to 2.6%. Daily users are, per the same study, about 1 in 5 of “current users”. So, that’s just over 0.5% of teens who are using the product every day. This is the scope of the “epidemic”.

Masculinity

As mentioned above, Swartz is very concerned with the gender makeup of nicotine pouch users, warning us that boogeymen like “Bert Kreischer, Tucker Carlson, and Joe Rogan are among the celebs who have discussed using Zyn.”

She worries that “young male conservatives, in particular, seem drawn to the buzz”, totally unaware that rigid conformity to anxiety-driven nanny state rhetoric is anathema to the young men of 2025. I’d wager that most of them aren’t even that conservative in the grand scheme of things. Their only crime is not being left of Antonio Gramsci or whoever.

PAVE crank

Of course, we get one of the cranks from Parents Against Vaping E-cigarettes spouting off. Long Island mom Laurie Ann Davis states that pouches “could easily be mistaken for Chiclet gum”. What sort of kids are you raising, Laurie? Can they even read? Also, has this ever actually happened? My guess is no.

Davis goes on to claim that “this is just another gateway to hurt our children,” tragically misunderstanding the purpose and intended market for these products.

Final thoughts

It’s easy to become tired of the biased coverage of nicotine pouches in the media. It’s basically the same article repeatedly, with the same spurious, easily dismissed claims, canards, and tropes.

When it comes down to it, high school students are almost as likely to use cigars, and more likely to use cannabis, TCH-delta, and alcohol, as they are to use pouches. Each of those substances poses a greater risk than nicotine pouches. Perhaps more importantly, each pouch or vape user is someone who is not experimenting with cigarettes. So, while it’s not something to encourage, it’s far better than the alternative.