00:00So some preliminary data that's coming out from the last couple of years, as we've seen
00:05the rise in Australia, some data is telling us that as much as three quarters of young
00:10people are aware of them, they know that they're out there.
00:13And in even some studies done out of, say, the University of Melbourne, just a couple
00:17of years ago, was finding that in their sample of young people, about one in five had actually
00:22tried them at least once.
00:23And I can say from my own personal experience, when I go out to schools and I scan and I
00:28interrogate certain things, I've actually run into a few cohorts of high schoolers
00:32who are more familiar with nicotine pouches than they are with the effects of, say, alcohol
00:37or even cannabis.
00:38Okay.
00:38You speak of young people here.
00:40What ages are you talking about, James?
00:43So if we're talking about the formal data that we're referring to in those specific statements,
00:47anything from 16 to the early 30s, on the other hand, you go into any high school, you start
00:52talking to seventh and eighth graders, they are aware they exist.
00:56We can't pretend that they aren't seeing them, that they aren't talking about them or that
01:00they aren't being told about them or even exposed to them from their older peers.
01:03Okay.
01:04A couple of questions in all of that.
01:05How are they firstly accessing these products, which I believe are banned by the TGA?
01:12Absolutely.
01:13So the TGA covers nicotine products in the laws and the regulations around them.
01:17The only exceptions really are around certain vapes and cigarettes, which means blanket ban on
01:24nicotine pouches is there by default.
01:25You're not legally allowed to get them here.
01:28However, you weren't ever legally allowed to buy a vape if you were a teenager at any
01:32stage of the vape bans.
01:33So we know that just making them illegal doesn't get them out of the way.
01:37The two common places that a young person would be accessing them would either be in
01:41person at a tobacconist, sort of an under the counter purchase that shouldn't be happening,
01:46or an online retailer.
01:47Simply Google nicotine pouches, buy online Australia.
01:50And the entire first page of results on Google are just awash with these dropship pump and
01:56dump stores to offload nicotine pouches and then disappear.
01:59Okay.
01:59So for parents watching at home who might not have heard of this before, can you explain
02:04what impact these nicotine patches are having on young people's health?
02:08So nicotine pouches up front, because of the nicotine content, present a risk of nicotine
02:14addiction.
02:15And interestingly, they use synthetic nicotine rather than what we call free-based nicotine
02:20that you would find in tobacco leaves, which actually allows these pouches to have a higher
02:24dose than they would normally be able to get away with with the natural stuff, meaning that
02:29young people could be exposed to higher doses of nicotine per pouch before feeling any irritation
02:33from using it.
02:35So that's problem number one.
02:37The second thing is that if we're talking health risks, and we're talking in the short
02:40term, some people experience nausea, headaches, vomiting, or burning.
02:45Some have even experienced seizures in the most unfortunate cases.
02:48But to me, the big danger here is that the long-term health effects of these products are
02:54quite frankly unknown.
02:55The research doesn't exist yet for us in a state that we would like it to.
03:00We've seen this product now in a similar trajectory to vapes.
03:03Be released to a market, largely untested, the chemical ingredient lists being mostly or
03:09completely unavailable, targeted primarily at a group of vulnerable, underage people under
03:15the guise of being helpful or harmless.
03:17And are they being marketed, you know, as sweet flavours, like the vapes were getting in
03:24trouble for doing when they were a problem?
03:29Absolutely.
03:29Same thing.
03:30It's almost one-to-one the tactics.
03:32You won't find a boring steel tin of nicotine pouches.
03:36They always have to be citrus bang or chili jalapeno, or even just referencing something
03:41as mundane sounding as mint or menthol or eucalyptus flavours.
03:45Okay.
03:45So the colouring of the packaging, the flavouring, and the way it's talked about on social media,
03:50very similar strategies.
03:50Two really brief questions.
03:52I mean, we know that vapes were originally designed for harm minimisation to move people
03:58away from combustible cigarettes to vapes, which were, you know, through your doctor,
04:03through a script, etc.
04:04Is there any suggestion that these pouches are for harm minimisation to move people off
04:09combustible cigarettes?
04:11Absolutely.
04:12The initial play from the tobacco industry would always be to be harm minimisation, not
04:17just a leisure product.
04:18In fact, if you look on a larger timescale, the tobacco industry doesn't want you to think
04:23that they're leisure products.
04:24They want you to think they're the good guys.
04:26They gave you vapes as medicine for your cigarettes.
04:29Now they're giving you nicotine pouches as medicine for your vapes.
04:32And we, for some reason, just seem to take that at face value.
04:35Okay.
04:36You're calling for urgent education around this.
04:38What would you like to see introduced?
04:40In terms of inside the school, I want us to be stepping away from punitive, fear-based,
04:47don't do this or you'll die type messaging, and instead exploring the product from the
04:51ground up from multiple angles, not just health, but also where's it coming from, who's
04:56making it, who's trying to sell it to you, what's their ultimate motivation.
04:59And for anybody watching who's a parent and they want to start talking to this about
05:02their kids, the best thing you could do right now is that once this segment's over,
05:06turn to your kids and go, nicotine pouches.
05:09Do you even know what they are?
05:10What do you know about them?
05:11And get the ball rolling.
05:12You'll thank yourself later in the long run.
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