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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. How much one could

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Speaker 1: woodchuck chuck if Woodchuck could rip upper deckisin.

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Speaker 2: He's upper deckye lip pillows food.

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Speaker 1: Max vander Art's TikTok videos might sound like he's speaking

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Speaker 1: in obscure language. Online, he adopts this persona known as

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Speaker 1: Chetty or freezer Tarps. He graduated from the University of

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Speaker 1: Tampa and he's into golf, drinking and sports bedding. But

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Speaker 1: these made up sounding terms he's using upper decky lip pillows,

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Speaker 1: they're describing something real. It's the slang around a rapidly

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Speaker 1: growing nicotine product, one that Max and influencers like him

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Speaker 1: have helped popularize. Zin.

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Speaker 2: I call it a little tea bag. It's like the

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Speaker 2: size of a long dime, and it is paper wrapped

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Speaker 2: around plant fiber and nicotine salt.

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Speaker 1: That's Ellen Hewitt, a writer for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

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Speaker 2: So basically, if you put this pouch in between your

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Speaker 2: gum and lip, you could do upper lip or lower

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Speaker 2: lip however you like, and wait thirty minutes, you will

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Speaker 2: slowly get a stream of nicotine into your bloodstream via

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Speaker 2: the mutus memorane of your mouth, and you'll.

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Speaker 1: Get buzzed like nicotine gum or a nicotine patch. Zin

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Speaker 1: is part of a long line of tobacco alternatives, but

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Speaker 1: the product has completely outperformed its competition, and just this

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Speaker 1: month became the first nicotine pouch to be authorized for

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Speaker 1: marketing by the FDA. Ellen's been charting Zin's unique rise

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Speaker 1: and how a lot of its success could be thanks

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Speaker 1: to an army of social media users like Max.

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Speaker 2: Zen creators have really kicked off this zin mania. For

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Speaker 2: lack of a better term, all right.

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Speaker 1: So today it's my boyfriend's birthday and he does not

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Speaker 1: like sweets of any sort, so we're gonna make can

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Speaker 1: make a thin birthday cake.

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Speaker 2: People keep asking me, Chops, what is your favorite Zin combo?

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Speaker 2: And I keep saying peppermin Zin's with some coffee. What's up, boys?

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Speaker 2: A couple new termis a couple of new terms for cassinin,

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Speaker 2: upper deckies, lip cushions, pillows, you name it.

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Speaker 1: Many of these so called zinfluencers are men. Most of

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Speaker 1: what they're posting is silly or absurd or made for

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Speaker 1: shock value, and Ellen says there's another thing zinfluencers have

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Speaker 1: in common. They're essentially making Zin ads for free.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what's most interesting about influencers is that

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Speaker 2: they are not paid by the maker of zin right,

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Speaker 2: so they are not necessarily Zin users. They are people

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Speaker 2: who are content creators who are hoping to get a

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Speaker 2: viral hit if they happen to make free advertising for

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Speaker 2: a nicotine product along the way, Like so it.

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Speaker 1: Goes, Zin pouches are now finding their way to be

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Speaker 1: upper deckies or upper gums of more and more American users,

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Speaker 1: and Philip Morris International, the tobacco giant that owns z in,

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Speaker 1: is profiting. But Ellen says all this online attention could

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Speaker 1: also pose an existential problem for the company because the

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Speaker 1: pouches are illegal for people under twenty one to purchase,

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Speaker 1: and social media is swimming in teens.

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Speaker 2: I think the major risk is they want to get popular,

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Speaker 2: but only a specific kind of popular. They want to

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Speaker 2: get popular with adults, and they do not want to

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Speaker 2: get popular with anyone who's under twenty one.

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Speaker 1: How can they control that?

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Speaker 2: The problem is they can.

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Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, we enter the Zinomatic

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Speaker 1: universe to understand whether the same forces that fueled Zin's

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Speaker 1: rise could lead to its downfall. There are a lot

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Speaker 1: of nicotine products on the market alternatives to tobacco that

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Speaker 1: some people use recreationally or to help quit smoking.

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Speaker 2: Like camel orbs, which are like dissolvable pellets of nicotine

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Speaker 2: or nicotine gum or nictine toothpicks mouth strips that you

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Speaker 2: can let dissolve in your tongue.

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Speaker 1: But Bloomberg's Ellen Hewitt says none of these nicotine products

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Speaker 1: have caught on the way Zin has in the past

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Speaker 1: few years.

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Speaker 2: So Zin arrived in the US in around twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 2: but it spent the first few years being like completely unremarkable.

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Speaker 2: Like the early branding from PMI was kind of bland.

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Speaker 2: It was very medical. It was like, you know, find

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Speaker 2: your Zin. Everything was very clean and white, trying to

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Speaker 2: appeal to smokers to switch. And something changed around late

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Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. All of a sudden, there just started

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Speaker 2: to become a lot more sales of Zin. People started

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Speaker 2: buying a lot more in the US. Sales suddenly doubled

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Speaker 2: over the course of a month, and then like kept

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Speaker 2: growing and growing, and sometime in like twenty twenty two,

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Speaker 2: you started to see a lot of Zin related content

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Speaker 2: on social media, so that's TikTok Instagram reels. Like a

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Speaker 2: lot of influencers are just trying to go for the

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Speaker 2: same things that some creators are going for on all platforms,

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Speaker 2: which is like shock value, attention grabby kind of controversial.

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Speaker 2: So you know, you see videos of people who stuff

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Speaker 2: like twenty Zin pouches in their mouth at once. Like

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Speaker 2: I interviewed a guy who made a Zin video where

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Speaker 2: he he talks about like this is his meal prep breakfast.

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Speaker 2: It's like frosted flakes, his meal prep, Zin pouches in

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Speaker 2: the cereal bowl and then a red bull on top.

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Speaker 1: Offline, Zin is quite literally flying off the shelves. Last summer,

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Speaker 1: there were actually Zin shortages in major cities, and that's

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Speaker 1: been great for Philip Morris's earnings. Pouch sales in the

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Speaker 1: third quarter of last year rose forty one percent compared

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Speaker 1: to the same period in twenty twenty three, pushing the

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Speaker 1: company's shares up ten percent in October. But it's hard

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Speaker 1: to pinpoint exactly what it is about Zin that makes

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Speaker 1: it so social media friendly.

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Speaker 2: It's this sort of smoking cessation product. It is not

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Speaker 2: designed to be cool. Philip Morris did not design this

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Speaker 2: to be like a cool product, but all of a sudden,

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Speaker 2: it has become associated with I don't know, hustle culture,

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Speaker 2: right wing pundits, hockey bros. I spoke to a guy

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Speaker 2: who made a rap song about Zin and the way

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Speaker 2: he described it to me, he was like, Zin is

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Speaker 2: really hot right now, every chad is doing it. And

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Speaker 2: so for those of you who don't know what a

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Speaker 2: chad is, it's just kind of a generic term for

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Speaker 2: an alpha male.

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Speaker 1: Zin has gone viral, and Ellen's been tracking how that's

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Speaker 1: made its use into something of a badge of honor

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Speaker 1: for certain types of people.

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Speaker 2: In the story, I try to lay out a few

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Speaker 2: different pockets of people who have kind of claimed Zin

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Speaker 2: as their own. One of them is kind of like

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Speaker 2: Wall Street junior analysts who were like huffing on their

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Speaker 2: jewel jewel vapes to get through their late night Excel sheets.

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Speaker 2: There's a sort of a Silicon Valley contingent people who

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Speaker 2: like to use nicotine as a productivity enhancer. So like

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Speaker 2: you have founders who are like using nicotine. That's kind

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Speaker 2: of this like contrarian way to get a productivity edge.

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Speaker 2: And then yeah, it's largely right leaning.

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Speaker 1: Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was also a major

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Speaker 1: Zin booster before he soured on the brand after Philip

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Speaker 1: Morris refused to partner with him. He launched a competing

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Speaker 1: nicotine pouch brand of his own in November.

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Speaker 2: He's obsessed with nicotine. He was talking about all the

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Speaker 2: time about how Zen feels like the hand of God

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Speaker 2: massaging your central nervous system. People called him Tucker Carls

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Speaker 2: in They just have these like uncontrollable voices out there

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Speaker 2: who are either like saying things about Zen or deciding

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Speaker 2: to promote Zin or not promote Zin, or promote a rival.

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Speaker 2: It's just kind of chaos out there.

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Speaker 1: Well, that does sound like a dream for the company

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Speaker 1: in a way, for Philip Morris, like they're getting all

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Speaker 1: this free advertising, but there's also this big risk for

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Speaker 1: them in all of us right totally.

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Speaker 2: That has been kind of the blessing and curse for

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Speaker 2: Philip Morris. They wanted to be popular, but obviously they

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Speaker 2: don't want it to be popular with teens. So that's

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Speaker 2: the crux of the story is they might just become

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Speaker 2: a victim of their own success.

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Speaker 1: After the break, how the trajectory of another viral smoking

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Speaker 1: alternative could offer a cautionary tale for Zin. Before Zinn

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Speaker 1: became the latest buzzy nicotine delivery product to capture the

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Speaker 1: popular imagination, Jewel E cigarettes dominated the market, and BusinessWeek

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Speaker 1: reporter Ellen Hewitt says that company's story holds lessons for

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Speaker 1: Philip Morris, which owns in.

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Speaker 2: Basically, Jewel became and potentially for good reason, the marquis

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Speaker 2: villain of the teen vaping crisis.

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Speaker 1: Jewel debuted its product in twenty fifteen. By December twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 1: the company was doing three point two million dollars in

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Speaker 1: monthly sales. But its success had a downside. It got

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Speaker 1: too popular with the wrong kind of users. In twenty nineteen,

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Speaker 1: state and federal lawmakers and the FDA accused Jewel of

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Speaker 1: marketing its products to minors, and as more and more

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Speaker 1: teens got hooked on the products, regulators circled.

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Speaker 2: They have also been sued and had many penalties levited

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Speaker 2: against them, and at some point the FDA banned Jewel.

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Speaker 2: They kind of walked the band back and eventually walked

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Speaker 2: it further back, but I think that really hurt their sales,

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Speaker 2: and then what ended up happening is vaping kind of

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Speaker 2: continued like people started buying these really unregulated important vapes.

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Speaker 2: So Jewel got really like smacked down. Other vapes replaced them,

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Speaker 2: and it was like really pretty damaging for the company.

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Speaker 1: Regulatory crackdowns, costly lawsuits, new competition. These these are the

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Speaker 1: kind of factors that can bring a trendy product crashing

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Speaker 1: down from its comfortable spot at the top.

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Speaker 2: With Jewel, of course, there were some differences, like Jewel

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Speaker 2: marketing very aggressively toward teens, you know, and as far

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Speaker 2: as we can tell, maybe that's not happening. But social

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Speaker 2: media is full of teens, and of course this content

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Speaker 2: is getting shown to miners. Of course, this could lead

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Speaker 2: to miners picking up this product in in mass.

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Speaker 1: To figure out how many teens are actually using ZIN,

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Speaker 1: Ellen looked at the results from the annual National Youth

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Speaker 1: Tobacco Survey twenty twenty three. Data showed that about one

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Speaker 1: point eight percent of middle and high schoolers reported using

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Speaker 1: nicotine pouches like ZIN, and that the number hadn't grown

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Speaker 1: much since the previous year. But the report for twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty four, which will come out this fall, could paint

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Speaker 1: a clearer picture of its growth over time.

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Speaker 2: We just don't know what the results for twenty twenty

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Speaker 2: four are going to show, and as we saw with Jewel,

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Speaker 2: basically if those results go up, that triggers a lot

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Speaker 2: of reaction, where it's usually like government response, FDA responses,

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Speaker 2: like there might be legislation, lawsuits, things like that that

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Speaker 2: might get triggered by a spike in usage of teens.

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Speaker 2: So it's kind of this guillotine hanging over the whole industry,

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Speaker 2: as someone described it to me. And I think PMI

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Speaker 2: has to be aware that this is an enormous risk

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Speaker 2: that if kids start using this, they might be screwed,

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Speaker 2: you know. And Philip Morris have tried to complain to

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Speaker 2: the social media platforms about certain content that they know

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Speaker 2: for sure is showing underage usage.

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Speaker 1: But Philip Morris says it doesn't have that much control

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Speaker 1: over what's influencers are posting about their product or who

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Speaker 1: sees it. It's directed the blame toward Meta TikTok and

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Speaker 1: YouTube for declining requests to remove some content. Representatives for

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Speaker 1: TikTok and YouTube said their employees enforce their community guidelines,

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Speaker 1: which prohibit content that shows miners using tobacco or nicotine

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Speaker 1: TikTok also says the platform Drick's content promoting nicotine products

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Speaker 1: to users eighteen and older. Meta didn't respond to a

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Speaker 1: request for comment.

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Speaker 2: Of course, our Zin users are older, but like a

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Speaker 2: lot of these content creators are young, and I think

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Speaker 2: if you know, Chetty's audience of course is going to

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Speaker 2: include teenagers. Like, there's just no way that that's not happening.

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Speaker 1: Chetti aka Max Vanderard, the TikTok user we heard about earlier,

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Speaker 1: didn't respond to requests for comment.

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Speaker 2: You know, I interviewed a guy who was a Zen

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Speaker 2: user in his mid twenties who picked it up when

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Speaker 2: he was twenty two, and he's trying to quit now.

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Speaker 2: And then his seventeen year old brother like sent him

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Speaker 2: a video of Chetty making jokes. And of course, if

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Speaker 2: his seventeen year old brother is following this creator, like,

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Speaker 2: he's going to get exposed to Zin content. He's going

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Speaker 2: to see and he's going to absorb some subliminal message

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Speaker 2: that suggests that, like, this is cool, this is what

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Speaker 2: college boys do, This is like how you fit in.

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Speaker 1: In the meantime, lawmakers in the US are still circling

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Speaker 1: the question of how to regulate Zin, and Ellen says

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Speaker 1: that just course is helping keep it in the news.

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Speaker 2: About a year ago, Chuck Schumer decided to hold a

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Speaker 2: press conference where he lay ambasted Zin and talked about

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Speaker 2: how this was like a pouch full of problems that

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Speaker 2: was like going to hook our teens on nicotine. And

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Speaker 2: so he held this press conference and talked about how

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Speaker 2: dangerous ZIN is. And I guess this prompted Republican lawmakers

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Speaker 2: to try to clap back and be like, you know,

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Speaker 2: keep your pause off my nicotine, give me you know, nicotine,

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Speaker 2: or give me death. Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted about how

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Speaker 2: this calls for a zinsurrection and I think whatever correlation

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Speaker 2: there might have been already between conservatives and Zin was clinched.

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Speaker 1: How is the cultural conversation, the online hype around ZIN

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Speaker 1: and the political discourse impacting who's getting into it now

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Speaker 1: and who's finding Zin and who's buying it?

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Speaker 2: You know, I did talk to users who were just like,

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Speaker 2: this is a better product than what I used to use,

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Speaker 2: Like I wanted to stop vaping. You know, you can

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Speaker 2: Zen at your desk. You no longer need to step outside,

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Speaker 2: You no longer need to like hide your habit. It's

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Speaker 2: really discreet and so yeah, for a lot of users

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Speaker 2: I talked to you, they just said, look, I have

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Speaker 2: an addiction. I used vape. I wanted to do something

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Speaker 2: else in works better for me. But I did touch

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Speaker 2: to a lot of people who were picking it up

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Speaker 2: as a result of these types of Z influencers on

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Speaker 2: seeing the content, thinking like, oh, you know, it can't

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Speaker 2: be that bad, like everyone's talking about it.

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Speaker 1: The FDA authorized several ZIN flavors for marketing this month,

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Speaker 1: citing the pouches public health benefits as a tool to

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Speaker 1: quit smoking, and the fact that so few young people

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Speaker 1: report using it as of now. The regulator also said

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Speaker 1: ZIN wasn't as harmful as cigarettes or other smokeless tobacco products,

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Speaker 1: but it didn't say ZIN was safe, and it didn't

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Speaker 1: recommend it for just anyone to use. What did doctors

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Speaker 1: say about the health impacts of ZIN and what are

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Speaker 1: some of the potential long term impacts of using it?

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Speaker 2: Most health experts agree that like combustible cigarettes really bad

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Speaker 2: for you, Vaping like also probably not very great for you,

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Speaker 2: And so if you already have a habit of doing those,

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Speaker 2: then using a nicotine pouch instead it's probably gonna be

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Speaker 2: better for you. It's not going through your lungs, and

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Speaker 2: if it's going to help you quit, then that's probably good.

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Speaker 2: The issue is, like, of course, the pouches themselves come

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Speaker 2: with their own problems. So if you didn't have a

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Speaker 2: habit before, you are now picking these up, which might

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Speaker 2: include mouth ulcers and basically a lot of like GI

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Speaker 2: issues because you are swallowing nicotine laced saliva.

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Speaker 1: Basically, Ellen says she isn't really the target audience for

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Speaker 1: the pouches, but in a small act of Gonzo journalism,

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Speaker 1: sorry gon Zin journalism, she bought them. I wouldn't call

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Speaker 1: her a zinfluencer, though her experience was pretty mixed.

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Speaker 2: I did buy a tin for researching this story, and

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Speaker 2: I tried the first pouch and I kept it in

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Speaker 2: too long and it made me sick. But then I

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Speaker 2: can't lie. I did finish the tin eventually. It took

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Speaker 2: me maybe like a couple weeks.

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Speaker 1: And did you buy another one after that?

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Speaker 2: No? I did not.

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Speaker 1: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.

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Speaker 1: This episode was produced by David Fox and Alex Tie.

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Speaker 1: It was edited by Tracy Samuelson. Aaron Edwards and Raihan Harmancy.

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Speaker 1: It was mixed and sound designed by Alex Suguiera. It

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Speaker 1: was fact checked by Adriana Tapia. Our senior producer is

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Speaker 1: Naomi Shadin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Hanso. Our executive

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Speaker 1: producer is Nicole Beamster borg Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head

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Speaker 1: of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure to

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Speaker 1: subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Speaker 1: It helps people find the show. Thanks so much for listening.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back next week.