Smokeless tobacco products target teens

They bear the names "Wild Honey" blunt wraps and "Peppermint" snus, but they are not the latest confections from Willy Wonka.

They are part of an effort by tobacco companies to market products to adolescents and teenagers, said Judith Coykendall at Partners for Clean Air, a Seven Hills Behavioral Health program in New Bedford.

"They smell delicious," she said, reaching into her American Cancer Society tote bag, which she calls her "bag of poisons," to pull out the cheerfully colored packets of "blunt wraps," which look to the undiscerning eye like fruit rollups and come in enticing flavors — watermelon, strawberry, blueberry and "sexual chocolate," the wrapper of which features a pair of bare female legs dripping with what appears to be melted chocolate.

Snus are marketed on the Camels website as a "smoke-free, spit-free" product and come in intriguing flavors, such as "frost" and "mellow." According to the American Cancer Society website, snus are commonly used in Scandinavia as quitting aids. The clinical-sounding "Nicogel," which looks exactly like a portable hand wipe and absorbs through the skin, is also marketed as a quitting aid.

However, Coykendall said she is concerned that what might help alleviate a seasoned smoker's cravings might also get a young person hooked for the first time. After all, she said, although most teenagers have heard that smoking is bad for their health, nicotine and tobacco are harmful whether smoked or not.

"Their natural assumption is that, if it doesn't have smoke, it doesn't have the dangers," Coykendall said. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, smokeless tobacco can still increase risk of mouth or nasal cancer and cause high blood pressure. Then there is the risk of becoming addicted to nicotine, Coykendall said, which leads to smoking.

According to the National Institute for Drug Abuse, "The amount of nicotine in smokeless tobacco is three to four times greater than that delivered by a cigarette." The nicotine also stays in the bloodstream longer.

In 2009, largely because of smoking bans and anti-smoking campaigns, cigarette use among high school students in Massachusetts fell to 16 percent, an almost 20 percent reduction since 1995. However, according to the same study, released by the Department of Public Health and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, sales of cigars and smokeless tobacco products in Massachusetts, like the Snus, have surpassed sales of regular cigarettes among minors in the last year, at 17.6 percent, a steady increase since 2003.

Over the past year, Nic Charest, director of the Greater New Bedford Tobacco Control Program, said he has seen these alternative tobacco products gain in popularity throughout New Bedford, Fairhaven and Dartmouth.

Charest works with a dozen high school students in Greater New Bedford, ages 15 to 17, to do compliance checks on the sale of cigarettes, part of a state initiative to make sure that stores are not selling tobacco-related products to minors — those under 18. In a carefully planned sting, the students try to buy cigarettes without producing identification.

State law requires retailers to ask for an ID if a customer appears to be under 27. "If they're successful" buying cigarettes, Charest said of his undercover crew, "we have enforcement that we'll follow up on."

Over the past few years, Charest said, tobacco sales to minors took place at 13 percent of the stores in Greater New Bedford, although that number dipped to 5 percent last year.

There might be a bright side for concerned anti-smoking advocates: A lot of teenagers around here haven't yet heard of products such as snus or Nicogel. In a room filled with teens at the Boys & Girls Club of New Bedford, no one nods when asked whether they have friends who use snus.

Cameron Lewis, an eighth-grader at Keith Middle School, and Katherine Sullivan, a 10th-grader at New Bedford High School, have parents who smoke, but neither uses tobacco.

Coykendall, however, said it might only be a matter of time for the trend to catch on.

"The tobacco industry had to come up with a product that could get their sales up tremendously," she said.

Alesha Gilbert and Markus Watson, both juniors from BMC Durfee High School in Fall River, have participated in Teaching Against Drug Abuse, an extracurricular program in Fall River that surveyed 49 stores that sell tobacco, looking at marketing rather than compliance.

Watson said he discovered that in most of the stores, the ads were placed at a 3-foot eye level.

"So it's not really targeting adults," he said. "Because most adults are not 3 feet tall."

Asked what makes her friends buy cigarettes, Gilbert said, "I think it's whatever is cheap. Whatever you can get your hands on."

According to information from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the price difference between cigarettes and snus is significant. Camel's frost-flavored snus, for instance, which come in a pack of 12, cost less than $4. Cigarettes cost at least $9 a pack.

Coykendall said these products fall into a legal "loophole" in which they are not subject to the state's cigarette tax. Nor do they fall under the state's ban on flavored cigarettes.

She also said the packaging for these products is attractive and enticing. Plus, snus dissolve in the mouth, making it hard to detect in school.

"If I used tobacco, I can imagine I would probably turn to another tobacco product that's more concealable so that I can get my nicotine for the day," Watson said. "Like kids who have to go through that eight-hour day and are not allowed to smoke."

Is nicotine consumption in class that easy?

"Like texting isn't allowed, but somebody manages to do it anyway," Gilbert said.