Noel King

Yeah.

I think part of it probably is on the part of the companies they spotted a marketing opportunity.

One person I profiled as part of this story is Jason Nguyen.

He's a co-founder of a brand called Athletic Nicotine.

And he's a former college quarterback and Ironman competitor.

And it's low dose nicotine pouches, meaning they come in, I think, one milligram and three milligram versus then you'll typically see maybe like six milligrams and up.

So the idea is you get like just a tiny hit of nicotine.

It's enough to help you really get through your weightlifting or help you through your bike ride.

Part of it is people are always trying to think about, like, what's a new, different, trendy way that we can market our products?

The tobacco industry, of course, has a long history of figuring out different niches that they can market to.

So I think that's part of it.

These are the early stages of a marketing effort.

Are you seeing that lots of people are starting to take nicotine in like pouch form or patch form?

I would say yes with an asterisk, which is that, you know, this is still pretty early.

So we're not necessarily capturing all of the data, for example.

So the most recent youth tobacco use survey showed that it was about half a million of middle and high school students using nicotine patches.

That is not a small number, but it's also 2% of high school students.

And then anecdotally, for example, I talked to one Stanford professor who said, well, based on what I see walking around campus, I think they're much more popular than that.

So I think we're still trying to get an accurate grasp on the data.

The Trump administration, of course, has aligned itself with RFK, which means aligning itself with the Maha movement, which makes me question whether the messaging on nicotine has changed at all during the second Trump administration with Robert Kennedy in the position that he's in.