2024-01-02 07:08:22
These colorful and addictive products contain up to 2% nicotine and a single “maxi puff” is equivalent to 18 packs of cigarettes. Pending their definitive ban, manufacturers are doubling down on stratagems to attract younger people.
A health danger for the youngest. While the National Assembly voted unanimously to ban “puffs”, these disposable electronic cigarettes with nicotine and fruity flavors particularly popular with young people, the hand is now in the Senate which must ratify this prohibition which should enter in force, this is the government’s wish, by the start of the 2024 school year.
Until then, manufacturers are working hard and are increasing their inventiveness in order to attract an increasingly young audience. Latest invention to date, the “puff 9000”, comprising 9000 puffs, colorful vapes, sometimes flashing, three times larger than a classic “puff” and which is equivalent, with its 2% nicotine, to 18 packs of cigarettes.
“I only smoke those. When you look at the puff, it makes you want it, the taste is fresh. It’s addictive, frankly, we’re not going to hide it,” says a very young user interviewed by BFMTV.
On the internet, obtaining these “puffs” is extremely easy, while on social networks, a black market is also gradually setting up.
“Front door”
Logically, this new version of “puffs” thrills health and addiction specialists, who see it as a gateway to long-term smoking for the youngest.
“It is a marketing product, fun, flavored, with bright colors, with aromas that correspond to the marketing target which are adolescents. The gestures in relation to the use of the puff also lead to dependence. It is a gateway to smoking”, says, still on BFMTV, Frédéric Le Guillou, pulmonologist and president of the Santé respiratory France association.
According to figures recently published by the Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT), teenagers’ use of electronic cigarettes, including the famous “puff”, tripled between 2017 and 2022. In 2022, more than 13 % of French adolescents revealed having already used this single-use cigarette according to the ACT-Alliance Against Tobacco.
Doctors have long warned regarding the dangers of these devices. “If you ingest this product for several months, you have a 100% chance of becoming addicted to nicotine. This is very clear,” explained Amine Benyamina, head of the psychiatry and addictology department at Paul-Hospital. Bush of Villejuif.
Control plan
In September 2023, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced that the government wanted to ban “puffs” as part of a “new national plan to fight once morest smoking“, which will be “presented soon” by the executive.
This plan, presented in November by the now former Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau, aimed to “get out” of the “fun side” of tobacco. As such, the ban on the poof“these vapes marketed for the youngest”, has also been confirmed.
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