2023-04-30 16:00:24
AArrived on the French market in 2021, the “puff” (pronounced “poof”) is a disposable single-use electronic cigarette. Ready to be consumed as soon as it is purchased and available both in supermarkets and tobacconists, it also benefits from an affordable price, around 9 euros, which makes it particularly easy to access and use.
However, if the sale of this product is normally prohibited to minors, this does not prevent its manufacturers from deploying aggressive marketing strategies aimed at young people, even very young people, especially on social networks. In addition to its size and its brightly colored packaging, it is the flavors offered, similar to those of confectionery, which are particularly revealing: frozen grape taste, cherry, cola, unicorn, mojito, cotton candy, chocolate-hazelnut…
This is a strategy that unfortunately seems to pay off since the puff is more and more widespread among middle and high school students. In 2022, according to a survey by the ACT-Alliance Against Tobaccomore than 13% of teenagers in France revealed that they had already used it. Figures recently published by the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT) only confirm this trend: the use by adolescents of the electronic cigarette, including the puff, has tripled between 2017 and 2022. A new single-use plastic and electronic product which is already found as waste on the beaches.
A major risk for biodiversity
The consumption of this product is however far from trivial. As recalled by theNational Academy of Medicine in a press release in February 2023, this is a “particularly sneaky trap for children and adolescents”. Using puff, which contains nicotine salts, increases the chances of developing inflammation of the airways. Its nicotine level, which can go up to 20 milligrams/milliliter, is high enough to create a strong dependence and can be a gateway to smoking. This is what the High Council for Public Health pointed out in a e-cigarette notice published in 2021.
Beyond the health aspect, the disposable electronic cigarette is, particularly with regard to its composition and its non-refillable nature, an environmental scourge contrary to the spirit of the Anti-waste law for a circular economy from February 10, 2020 and all the initiatives to put an end to single use. Made of plastic, a non-removable battery containing an average of 0.15 grams of lithium, nicotine salts and containing traces of heavy metals, puffs become complex waste, poorly collected, not recycled and whose components can pollute soils, groundwater and oceans. They represent a major risk for biodiversity.
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