Zyns, Vapes & Teens: What Do Parents Need to Know?

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Reena Ninan:
I just found a can of Zyns in my eighth grade son’s room. What the heck are Zyns?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
This weird little pouch is now showing up in my kid’s stuff. How do I not blow this? Nicotine is so powerful. It is so addictive. It is very hard to quit. And we have very real worries about the neurological impact on the developing brain.

Reena Ninan:
If they’re buying the advertising that it’s helping me focus and giving me energy when I’m exhausted. How do I counter that?
So I feel like we are roughly around the country about a month or so plus into this school year, and I love checking in with you now. What should we be doing? How should we be feeling? Give us a check.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, around my house, it’s leaning into the celebration of the routines and having kids out of the house. How about you?

Reena Ninan:
Love your routines. I know. I do too. I know it’s like you love the summer, but you can’t wait to get them back in.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It is so funny. Right? At the end of the summer, everybody’s like, when are they going back? Right? And now they’re back. They’re back. Of course, it brings all this other stuff, but at least we know that is in place. How’s it going on your end?

Reena Ninan:
Yeah, no, no. I think that having the routines and knowing who has soccer practice when and getting into it really, really helps make a difference. But I love also that our parenting community sends us requests on topics that I never would have thought of. That just never crossed my mind. But now having a high schooler, I think the world is so different. It feels like to me.
We’re looking at Zyns today. I want to read you this, which I had never heard of what Zyns was, so it’s going to be education for a lot of folks, including myself. I’m going to read you this letter.
Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena, I just found a can of Zyns in my eighth grade son’s room and I’m not sure what to make of it. When I asked him about it, he said a friend gave them to him and that he doesn’t like them. But I honestly don’t know whether to believe him or how seriously to take this. I want to keep the lines of communication open, but I’m also worried about how to address this without overreacting or underreacting. What should I say or do going forward? I’d really appreciate any advice on how to handle this situation. Thank you so much. Well, first off the question I had to you when you proposed doing this, what the heck are Zyns?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So Zyns are little packets of nicotine powder. They’re small. They’re usually white, I think, but the size of a quarter, if a quarter, were a little rectangle.

Reena Ninan:
So they’re like little mints. Do they look like little mints?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They look like little pouches, little pouches, and they go between the gum and the cheek and they deliver nicotine. And so you can’t really tell someone’s using it. He sort of just sits there and delivers nicotine through the gum tissue.

Reena Ninan:
And how did this become a thing? When did you start picking up on this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, they’ve been around for a while, but there’s sort of been a surge in use. And we’re seeing this, tracking this in the data and the use is largely among white boys and it’s kind of late high school, early college is sort of more where we’re seeing it. And these came on the market. They’re actually vaping in that they came on the market as a product that could deliver nicotine. That wasn’t tobacco cigarettes. And the theory here is that these are safer because they don’t have all the carcinogens that come with combustible tobacco. So first there was vaping, which of course we have a lot of concerns about that because you may not be having combustible tobacco, but you are ingesting superheated chemicals, which is its own problem. And so then Zyns have come on the scene, tobacco pouches, were not, those have been around for a while where people put chewing tobacco, but they don’t chew it. It’s in a pouch and it goes in the gum, and then that’s how they get their nicotine hit. And do you remember Reena? I mean when I was growing up in Colorado, boys would have packs of chew in their back pockets. Was that a thing where you were growing up?

Reena Ninan:
Yeah, some people did it. Yeah, I do remember that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
In my world, it was actually a thing thing. It was actually the cool guys had a worn down circle in the back of their Levi’s from where they kept their chip. That was a whole thing in my high school.

Reena Ninan:
So funny.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So this is, Zyns are sort of an evolution of the chewable suckable tobacco, but unlike what we grew up with, you don’t spit it. You don’t, which I think kind of gross, but that’s the idea behind Zyns, that they theoretically are a substitute for ways to get nicotine that we have reason to think are actually more dangerous than that.

Reena Ninan:
So when you compare them to vape pens, are these more toxic, less toxic? What do you think?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
We have what people are guessing right now, and I will speak for the medical community though I’m not a physician. I think people don’t, I know people don’t love the idea of ingesting superheated chemicals into one’s lungs, that that’s what vaping involves in addition to a nicotine delivery device. I am guessing that on balance, they’re like, okay, if you have to do one of these, Zyns may be better in that they just have this delivery device through the gum tissue, but they’re not harmless. Nobody thinks they’re harmless. There’s worries about the impact on the gum tissue. There’s worries about the impact of nicotine on the developing brain of teenagers. There’s worries about the fact that nicotine soups up your heart rate and raises your blood pressure and there’s worries about that and terms of long-term cardiovascular health. So none of these are actually good for you. Then there’s the question of lesser of evils. It’s sort of this really weird pattern we keep running into where something new comes on the scene, like vaping, gets approved because there’s this idea that it’s less dangerous than smoking, but we have really no idea what the harms are. And these are research studies that take a long time and sometimes, especially for things that cause cancer, nicotine doesn’t cause cancer, but there’s worries about other things that can be in any of these things. It takes decades to see the impact.

Reena Ninan:
Oh, wow. I hadn’t thought of that. Because the research, right?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. And also you smoke in your twenties, you get emphysema in your sixties. I mean, there’s a very long trajectory. So we’re sort of in this weird place as a scientific community of this stuff comes on the scene and we’re like, we know nothing. We’ve got no data, we have no models to work off of better I think to avoid it if you can. I mean, that’s the general feeling.

Reena Ninan:
My mom gut checked, which is not medically approved, just says, stay away from how do I get my kid off of these if they’re on them or not to get them hooked or have a conversation, what do I need to do?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. We don’t want kids on these. And I think even if, let’s imagine a universe where Zyns are totally safe physically, where there’s no carcinogenic worries, no gum worries, no cardiovascular worries, there’s still the neurological impact of nicotine on the brain. And we have very real worries about the neurological impact of nicotine on the developing brain.
And then the other thing, and this is the bottom line. It’s so addictive Reena. Like I have never smoked cigarettes. Did you ever smoke? Was that ever part of your life?

Reena Ninan:
No. No. It just wasn’t. First off, I don’t like the taste of, have you ever kissed somebody who smoked a cigarette? It’s just not a great.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, it’s not my thing.
But what people who have smoked and quit will tell you is if they found out the world was going to end tomorrow, they would just like, oh my God, go back to smoking. Nicotine is so powerful. It is so addictive. It is very hard to quit. So whatever else, it’s not good for anybody to become hooked on these. I mean, hooked is the right word, especially if they’re not trying to step down from cigarettes to it. If they’re just starting on Zyns, that’s not a good idea.

Reena Ninan:
Can you gauge how big of a trend this is among teens? Is this really a big thing? Do people really need to worry about this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I mean, we’re looking at the data right now that we have is about a year old and it’s like one in 20 teens. So that’s not nothing. I mean, that means if you walk into a classroom and it’s got 20 kids, one and a half of those kids are doing Zyns. So that’s not a nothing thing.
Is it in the universe of risks that face teenagers? Is it the thing that keeps me up at night? Actually not, right? I mean, fentanyl keeps me up at night. This does not. So I think it’s hard, just like what’s the right proportional response? How do we want to think about it? Our work, Reena always, this podcast always is about the relationship with your kid and then how these things that show up on the scene come into that relationship. And this letter is so beautiful because this parent’s like, I don’t want to overreact. I don’t want to underreact. I feel like I got to do something. So this weird little pouch is now showing up in my kid’s stuff. How do I not blow this?

Reena Ninan:
Is this more popular among certainty teens, certain parts of the country? What else? Tell me more about the research that you are seeing.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So what we are seeing is it does tend to be higher rates in the 20 and up. It’s actually the young twenties, I think, where we’re seeing some of the higher rates, not so much in teens. I mentioned Reena, that it’s mostly white kids. And this is actually a really interesting thing. These trends are very normed into groups. So I asked my college aged daughter, I was like, what do you know about Zyns? She’s like, oh, frat boys. Oh, that was the first time. Very interesting. Yeah. She’s like, oh yeah, she’s like the frat boys do that. It just sort of fits with our understanding of how the world works. You’re in a frat that kid’s doing it. And there’s actually this interesting little quirky finding that has always stuck with me about norms in their power. So in the 1970s, teenagers smoked cigarettes. That was a very real thing. White teenagers smoked cigarettes. Black teenagers did not smoke cigarettes. They saw it as a white thing to do.

Reena Ninan:
Oh, interesting.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s helpful to be norms. And those norms break down around racial lines, socioeconomic lines, different populations. But the other place we’re seeing Zyns sort of come into adolescents universes is actually through what they call zyn-fluencers on TikTok. Have you heard this term?

Reena Ninan:
I haven’t, but I can understand where you’re going with this. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s right there. And so these influencers are saying things like Zyns are, they give me energy for working out and they help me focus. And this one. And I was like, oh man, that is so teenager targeted. It gives me confidence, right?

Reena Ninan:
Oh my gosh. So sign me up. Who wouldn’t want Zyns?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Right? And imagine being like a 15-year-old, they’re like, yeah, I want to work out. I want to be confident. I’m supposed to focus this little pouch that no one’s going to see me using a hundred percent. Sign me up.

Reena Ninan:
And if people don’t understand the impact of tobacco, it doesn’t feel like it’s a narcotic that’s going to kill you or that’s disastrous to your health. You don’t see the implications right away. Like you said, it could be decades from now.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. And then also, and this was something that came up with vaping early days, kids very quickly latch onto the idea that, well, this is safe compared to cigarettes, this is safe. And it may well be that these are safer than cigarettes, which is also not saying a lot, like cigarettes kill you. So something that’s safer than cigarettes, that’s not a great bar to try to be clearing. But I can see a kid who’s like, this influencer is telling me stuff that I want to be part of. And this is a little packet. It has no tobacco leaves in it. We have no searing evidence that it’s a carcinogen. And it’s honestly also, Reena easy to hide.

Reena Ninan:
Cause they’re so small?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
They’re so small, they make no smells. Even with vaping, vaping smells, you can usually smell vaping, especially if a kid is using a fruity flavor. So these are very, very discreet. You can stick ’em in your pocket.

Reena Ninan:
So if I’m talking to my kid about this or just want to have a conversation even before maybe they meet what Zyns are in real life, what should I be telling them? What should we be discussing so they’re aware? They seem like little pouches that are not that dangerous. But if I’m buying the advertising that it’s helping me focus and giving me energy when I’m exhausted as a teen, how do I counter that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So I actually feel like we can make a poster of rules for talking with teens about risky stuff because I love that we come back to this topic and that it does pull us to some big principles. So first thing always, what do you know, ask your kid. What do you know about Zyns? Right? And I love, people can listen to this podcast with their kids. People can come home and be like, yes, I was listening to Reena and Lisa today, and what do you know about Zyns? I’m learning about Zyns. What do you know about Zyns? Start there. Always start there. Whatever the risk is. That’s the first question. Because kids might be like, I’ve never heard of them. And they may be like, why are you asking? They may be, like busted. So start there and then see what they know. See what they think in terms of it’s a big deal, it’s not a big deal if your kid’s like, oh yeah, no, I think it’s super weird that kids are doing that. That’s an easy conversation. You can be like, yeah, I don’t like it either. You have to go off of what they know or what they think they know. Because there’s also a lot of things that kids believe or have heard or learn from TikTok that’s actually not even true. So you want to get at the facts and get a sense of what’s true and not true. And if they say something and you’re like, I don’t think that’s true. I’m a big fan of let’s hop online and check. Let’s find a reputable source and check together rather than being the one to give them the lecture.
The American Lung Association has a wonderful, wonderful website and has a lot of information about this stuff. So that would be the first stop I’d make.

Reena Ninan:
I’m just curious though, Lisa, aren’t these age restricted? Where do I buy them? No, no, they’re not age restricted.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
No, they are. They’re not supposed to be sold to anyone under the age of 21. They’re sort of lumped in with tobacco products, including vapes. Unfortunately. And this from just living in the world, the fact that vapes are not supposed to be sold to people under 21 has really had minimal impact on whether or not a teenager can access them. I mean, they can get them anywhere. They can get them from the internet, they can get them from a gas station that’s like not really going to put a lot of energy into checking kids’ ages. I mean, these are accessible or bigger kids, older kids get ’em and pass ’em around.

Reena Ninan:
A dumb question, but I’m just curious. Why is it that kids do this? Why do they use this? Help me understand the psychology of what is going on here.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Not a dumb question at all, right? I mean, you’re like, I’m not addicted to nicotine.

Reena Ninan:
Yes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Now I have access to this weird little pouch that I can stick in my mouth and it does give me kind of a buzzy feeling. I mean, there is the reality that nicotine is, it feels good, it actually does feel good, but I’m not already addicted to nicotine and I’m not a dumb kid. I don’t have a reason to become addicted to nicotine, right? I mean, it’s a good question. Why do kids even do this? Honestly, Reena, the main reason, teenagers by their nature want to push boundaries. They want to do slightly edgy things. They want to operate a little bit in the kind of margin of what a little beyond the level of what their families want them to do. That is totally natural. And so this falls very cleanly into that department of like, lemme just give it a try. So I think the question really, and it’s not a dumb question at all, is why do kids start and then why do kids keep doing it?
So the start, I can see you’re in a frat and everyone’s doing it and you’re like, okay, fine, I’ll try it. Or I feel weird not to be doing it. Or you’re 15 and suddenly you have access to this thing and you’re like, oh my gosh, my folks would so not want me to do this. I can get away with this. There’s that thrill. But then there’s the bigger issue, which is you do it enough, and I don’t know how many times it takes. Now you’re hooked on nicotine and now you’re going to keep going. So I think even in talking with kids about why they’re doing it, I think it’s probably worth breaking out why you start versus why you stay.

Reena Ninan:
Why you start versus why you stay. You know in this letter, I love that the parents said, I want to address this without overreacting or underreacting. What does overreacting look like to something like this?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I dunno, what do you think? What would you picture? If you, based on what we’ve said so far, what would your idea of overreacting look like?

Reena Ninan:
If I found this in my kid’s backpack, I would not be cool. Let me tell you that. I would have lost my mind. I would’ve lost my mind threatening to let ’em camp in the woods. What are you doing? You’re an athlete, you’re doing well in school. What is going on? So I’m grateful for this podcast because I can tell you I was overreacting. What?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Like, what the heck? What the heck? Okay.

Reena Ninan:
Yeah. Heck wouldn’t be the word I would use, but okay.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, but we’re trying to have us be family friendly, Reena, try to keep cool.

Reena Ninan:
I’m trying to keep it cool. I know I would not curse at my kid, but yes, I’m just telling you, just even the concept of what you’re putting me in, of kind of modeling, having that interaction, I would lose my mind. I would just lose my mind because you’re in high school, you’re working at a lot of things and then all of a sudden you’re going to blow it with this. And I wouldn’t understand the context, right? In this letter they said this was actually for a friend, gave it to them and they’re not interested. He doesn’t like it. I wouldn’t buy any of that. I wouldn’t buy any of that. Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, there’s also the classic holding for a friend question with teenagers, and I think that’s age old and fantastic and an interesting one. I actually think everything you said up to blow, you’re going to blow it all over this. I actually think it’s a reaction. I actually don’t think it’s much of an overreaction. I think kids push boundaries. It’s good for them to come up against limits, and I actually think it’s good for them to come up against real unhappiness about what they’re doing around comparatively small things in the broad range of all the risks teenagers can tangle with. This is a comparatively small thing. I’m a fan of a real reaction to it because in my experience, if kids are like, oh, you found my Zyns, and you were like, Hey, this is cool. What’s this? Right? Interesting. Then they can have, not every kid, they can be like, okay, well what does it take to get an adult around here to act like an adult? And then they can notch it up, which we don’t want them to do.

Reena Ninan:
Wait, so are you saying that sometimes the kids watch our reaction? Are they goading us?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I wouldn’t say goading, but I think your kid knows you, our listeners kids know them. If you found Zyns in your ninth grade son’s backpack, he would be pretty weirded out if you were like, Hey, kiddo, what’s this? Right?

Reena Ninan:
True.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
He would,

Reena Ninan:
the tone doesn’t match the moment

Dr. Lisa Damour:
and it doesn’t match you. And so if you’re like, buddy, what the heck? What the heck? What the heck? I think you’re actually setting a nice firm line. I think the only place in what you said, where I would push back a little bit is this idea that he’s blowing everything over this stuff, right? It’s actually probably not going to mess up his grades. It’s not going to mess up his sports. And I think that we have to be careful, and it’s such a delicate line, I think when kids are like, well, that’s not true, then they can be more resistant to the rest of it. So I would scale it back just a little and just be like, this is not okay. Okay, so you’re holding it for a friend, but now we have this teachable moment. Lucky you because I found this, and I think the thing I would really throw down about is these are highly addictive. These are highly addictive. We have medical concerns, we have brain development concerns, but the immediate threat to you is now these own you. You now are sitting with your friend or sitting in class wondering when you can get your next one because these will very quickly make you crave them all the time. And you don’t want to be owned by anybody. You don’t like me telling you what to do. You want those telling you what to do? That is where I think I would really push hard on a kid about don’t turn your day over to this company that is doing this marketing that theoretically is for people who are on cigarettes. But frankly, I don’t think your friend is trying to get off cigarettes and you don’t want to get hooked on nicotine.

Reena Ninan:
But overall, Lisa, big picture here. What do you think parents need to keep in mind if you find it or even preemptively to have this conversation? Like you said, Hey, I listen to the podcast and this is what I heard. Where do we begin?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think curiosity always, always curiosity. It’s such a weird moment, Reena, to be parenting all this stuff that’s coming on the scene that we did not have. Social media, vaping, Zyns. It’s all very strange and unfamiliar, and so it can freak us out. I think that in talking with kids, we just want to get their take on it, learn from them, be truly almost anthropological in it and try to understand what it is, what it means to them, what their take on it is. Do our own research about the real threats. I think the biggest thing to focus on, especially in the sort of vaping-Zyns universe, is teenagers don’t like to be manipulated by anybody, and they really don’t like to be manipulated by adults. The best strategy you’re always going to have for stuff like this is showing kids how they’re being played. This company has people promoting them online, telling you things that make it seem cool. It is in their interest to get you hooked because as soon as you’re hooked on nicotine, you are now a customer for a very long time. They’re not about your best interest. They are about the bottom line. Don’t play into their hands.

Reena Ninan:
This is really good, the manipulation, because I think when you’re young and you’re experimental and you’re trying things, you don’t feel the effects, like you said, for decades to come. So I think you take a hit, you try a little, your friends are doing it. It can’t be that bad if everybody’s doing it or a couple people are doing it. So you don’t understand how you are slowly becoming addicted to what seemed like a totally benign substance.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And they’re kind of cute. They have flavors, right? I mean, there’s so many, and this was true also, this is why Juul ended up losing that lawsuit, was that their stuff was adorable and enchanting to kids and a whole bunch of attorneys generals sued them like you are basically marketing to kids. And that’s how the suit went down. They look so much more benign than the raw tobacco the guys I grew up with were chewing. So we have to let kids know that’s by design. They could make them look scarier, but they don’t.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’m interested, Reena, in our conversation about gauging reaction, we are up against a whole bunch of other information kids have about how bad or good anything is, and we don’t want to get too far away from what they believe or what they actually know. If we are like, holy moly, Zyns, you’re never going to college. I think we lose them in that moment. I think if we’re like, holy moly, I found a very terrifying drug in your room. A full on reaction is warranted because you want it to match the threat level. But if we overreact and treat Zyns like heroin, which it isn’t, and kids know it isn’t, we lose credibility. So it’s a tough one because you don’t always have a lot of warning when you discover Zyns in your kids’ backpack. But we want to be careful about matching our reaction to the threat level so that we maintain trust with our kids.

Reena Ninan:
That is such a great little nugget that matching your reaction to the threat level. I never thought of it that way, but that’s what a great point you’re making. And I also feel like we’re busy. Yesterday they told me there was nothing in the fridge for dinner and I lost it. I’m like, there’s three different things in the fridge for dinner. So I think when we are busy parents and you’re trying to keep all the balls in the air, juggling a little thing like this, it’s so easy to blow up. And I think that’s what I was reacting to is we just feel the pressure of everyday life and then you know, need to have a conversation, but you just have a thousand other things you’re dealing with, and I think it sets you off easily. It’s really easy to get set off by stuff like this.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And you can recover, you can repair, you can apologize. You can say, you know what? I reacted as though it’s heroin. It’s not heroin, but you shouldn’t be touching it anyway. I mean, you can come back. But part of what I love right now about getting to do these podcasts together is now if a family finds them, they’ve had a chance to think it through, that they’re not coming to a cold. And that’s really, I think the best defense is good preparation.

Reena Ninan:
What a great point. I’m telling you, you’ve flagged so many issues over the years from porn to Zyns to I just had never thought of and would never have crossed without this podcast. So thank you, Lisa, for bringing it to our attention.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Teenagers are spicy. I love them, but they are spicy.

Reena Ninan:
I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.