The pill, or rather the trace, did not pass at all. This Friday morning, on France Info, the Minister of Health, Frédéric Valletoux, swore that his skin would have “Sniffy”, a white powder that you inhale through a straw to give yourself a boost. This “latest invention”, of which 20 minutes spoke on Thursday, the minister discovered it “forty-eight hours ago”.
“This junk that some people want to sell, I will see in the coming days how we can ban this type of thing,” declared Frédéric Valletoux. “It’s annoying to see those who, under the cover of a somewhat ‘harmless’ speech, a bit ‘we have the right’, ‘it’s not dangerous’, try to attract young people towards tobacco or drug consumption,” lamented the minister. If the product is indeed legal, the problem is not there for the minister. He also draws a parallel with the “puffs”, against which “we fought”, he insists.
Tobacconists refuse to sell this product
“Sniffy is the latest innovation in inhaling powder that everyone will be talking about,” says the website of Highbuy, the company from the creator of “Sniffy.” This is indeed the case, but certainly not in the way expected. While Sniffy is supposed to be partly distributed by tobacco shops, the confederation of tobacconists warned on Friday of the “threat” that “sniffing products” pose to the “ethics of the network”. On his Facebook pagethe confederation assures that it “cannot support the marketing of this product, without anticipating serious consequences”, adding that it had “seized the authorities”.
Near 20 minutes, a psychiatrist specializing in addictions had deplored a “trivialization” of a gesture that the collective imagination associates with taking cocaine. “The problem with the marketing of this product is obviously not its composition, but its advertising promotion which is based in some way on decocainated cocaine,” deplores for his part Bernard Basset, doctor specializing in public health and president of the Addictions France association. He also denounces the variation of the product in “different sweet and tangy flavors […] which, we have no doubt, will attract the youngest.”