“Sniffy”: this over-the-counter cocaine-looking powder that’s controversial

The puff, a disposable digital cigarette that encourages younger folks to smoke

In keeping with the official web site of the producer, a Marseille-based firm, this energizing “sniffing powder” supplies “an prompt vitality enhance” for a length of “twenty to thirty minutes”. It is available in candy flavors comparable to ardour fruit, strawberry sweet and contemporary mint, and appears to focus on a younger viewers: “Sniffy will accompany you in lots of conditions: throughout your bodily workouts, your research, exams, however night time once more.”

The product’s many parts – L-arginine, caffeine, creatine, L-citrulline, taurine, beta-alanine and maltodextrin – are harking back to these in vitality drinks. Principally bought on-line, the product shouldn’t be but distributed in Belgian tobacco retailers.

In the direction of a ban?

In France, well being professionals are the primary to control. “What shocks me is the intention behind this product. You promote a product within the type of a white powder with a pipette, the intention could be very clear, it’s to remind folks of the consumption of cocaine, it’s a advertising and marketing extra, they dared and succeeded in inserting it amongst tobacconists or elsewhere, which appears completely scandalous to me” deplores Amine Benyamina, addictologist psychiatrist and president of the French Federation of Addictology to our colleagues at BFMTV.

“We will’t not take into consideration cocaine. The nasal ingestion methodology is barely used for medication and cocaine. Nevertheless, we’re in a society the place consumption has develop into very commonplace. Antwerp is the hub in Belgium. It is a main difficulty that we should take head on,” explains psychiatrist Caroline Depuydt, head of division on the Fond’Roy clinic in our colleagues from the DH. “It’s utterly catastrophic for younger folks. This powder trivializes and downplays cocaine. It makes her attractive.”

However the gesture doesn’t appear to attraction to the sensitivity of the Marseille firm: “A white powder that we inhale by means of the nostril? No confusion, Sniffy is authorized,” the model even quips on its web site.

Earlier than Sniffy, “puffs”, disposable digital cigarettes, fashionable with younger folks, had already prompted controversy for ecological and public well being points. Belgium plans to ban it in December 2025, as a part of its interfederal anti-tobacco plan, voted in 2022.