Noel King

So this is a really good question.

We know, as we mentioned earlier, that nicotine is highly addictive.

And there's a concern about young people and non-smokers in particular starting to use nicotine if they don't already and how that could lead them down a path toward potentially more dangerous habits such as cigarettes as well.

Then the research on nicotine itself, we know that it can increase your blood pressure and therefore your risk of potentially heart disease.

We know that with young people, it can have an impact on the way that your brain develops.

However, there isn't a ton of long-term research into oral nicotine pouches, and that's something that the American Heart Association, among other organizations, has called for more research to be done so that we can get a good sense of exactly what the risks are.

Okay, so some of these folks are Maha adjacent, or you might think they're Maha curious.

How does nicotine use square with the larger Maha push, you know, things like get the microplastics out of our food, get the pesticides out of our food, etc., etc.

?

Yeah, it's an interesting question because, you know, some of these nicotine pouches do contain microplastics, for example.

And that's something that would be a contradiction, right?

But it does square with the Make America Healthy Again movement in that it's sort of like counterintuitive.

So I'd put it along the same lines as, you know, saturated fat is good or...

Drinking raw milk is good.

It's kind of reaching into sort of edgy ideas that people might also find pleasure in as well.

Yeah.

So that makes me wonder, like, there are other things you can do to focus and get you through a gym set.

Caffeine is an obvious one, right?

Why did nicotine become the go-to?

Like, what spurred all this interest in something that, again, because of the association with cigarettes, we've often thought of as like a bad thing?