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The disposable electronic cigarette or “puff”, which must be banned by the end of the year, benefits from a “growing awareness” among adolescents, particularly on social networks which give it a “positive and rewarding” image. , the Alliance Against Tobacco (ACT) worried on Thursday.
The puff is “by far the best known nicotine product” by young people, i.e. 81% of adolescents aged 13 to 16 (+8 points in one year), and the most consumed, 18% having already used it used (including 11% “once or twice”, 4% regularly), according to the third survey on the use and perception of tobacco and nicotine products, carried out from August 29 to September 9 by the BVA institute for the ACT.
If the use of tobacco products (cigarettes, heated tobacco, shisha) or nicotine (puffs, nicotine sachets, nicotine pearls)remains generally stable over the last two years“, that of puffs – influenced in particular by “targeted marketing offering multiple fruity aromas” – increases by five points compared to 2022, according to the survey.
Thus 18% of 13-16 year olds have already used it – compared to 16% for rechargeable electronic cigarettes, 14% for cigarettes or hand-rolling tobacco and 1% for nicotine sachets (pouches).
For the ACT, which brings together 23 anti-smoking associations in France, social networks make it possible to “normalize practices relating to puff and electronic cigarettes as being +cool+, +fun+ and +trendy+“: eight out of ten adolescents (81% compared to 82% in 2023) consider it “cooler” to use puffs than to smoke cigarettes, according to the survey.
And teenagers judge these products “easily accessible, particularly from tobacconists“: 39% of 13-16 year olds believe that it is with tobacconists that it is “easiest to buy puffs“(six points more than in 2023) or pockets, alarms the ACT, which demands”a ban in principle on all nicotine products, excluding vaping products and nicotine substitutes“.
Questioned by AFP, the Ministry of Health indicated that the proposed law ratifying the ban on puffs will be promulgated “by the end of the year”.
The ban on nicotine sachets or “pouches” will be passed by a decree in the Council of State, with a view to application “in the coming months”, according to the same source.