We’re in a new era of nicotine products. The rugged Marlboro Man has been replaced by the very-unofficial Zynfluencer. But where there’s smokeless nicotine and vapor, there’s often a looming plume from Big Tobacco, the traditional cigarette powerhouses. (Zyn, the tobacco-free pouch that is the nicotine product of the moment, is owned by one of those companies, Philip Morris International.)
Now, new companies from outside of the traditional cigarette industry are working to disrupt nicotine, offering tobacco-free options that might sate a social smoker without lighting up—as well as FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) designed to wean quitters gradually.
These companies told GQ about the challenges of going up against Big Tobacco, common misconceptions about nicotine, and what their customers often don’t know about their Elf Bar.
Making quitting coolBlip looks a little like if Nicorette’s branding was taken over by a Berlin electronic music venue. The company sells its products—nicotine gum, lozenges, and nicotine-free flavored toothpicks—online and in CVS. The former two are FDA-approved NRT products, and the latter is often used as a physical stand-in for a vape or cigarette.
The company’s first spark happened when branding pro Alyson Lord worked with model and artist Josephine Lee, who also goes by Princess Gollum, on a photoshoot for Starface, the popular pimple sticker brand. Lee suggested that Lord apply the Starface treatment to nicotine patches, and later, Blip was co-founded by the two, along with Starface founders Brian Bordainick and Julie Schott.
For quitters looking for a more Goop aesthetic, there’s Jones, which offers FDA-approved NRT along with a support community and texting program—which studies show make quitting efforts more effective.
Jones was founded by Hilary Dubin and Caroline Huber, childhood friends from Los Angeles who also went to the University of Pennsylvania together. There were both regular Juul users who encountered extreme difficulty in trying to quit cold turkey. Huber’s mom, a family medicine physician, eventually recommended nicotine replacement therapy after Huber revealed her Juul habit and intention to quit. (Huber’s mom also pointed out that she’d been consuming about two packs of nicotine per day.)
Huber gives smoking cessation market leader Nicorette credit for educating people for years on its own smoking cessation products. However, she said, “it almost felt like you had to identify as a smoker for that to be an obvious next choice.”
To her, that meant there was a gap in the market: “I really think that Juul came in and modernized smoking—and it just took a little bit of time for people to decide they wanted to quit vaping,” she said. Many Jones customers are surprised with the amounts of nicotine they’ve been vaping per day. Customers can take a quiz on the Jones website about their habits, with thousands of responses logged so far. Most customers report using illegal Elf Bars and similar devices—which she said contain the nicotine equivalent of 590 cigarettes. (Last June, the FDA issued warnings to stores selling Elf Bars across the United States, but similar e-cigarettes remain readily available—as you’ve surely noticed if you’ve been to a music festival, bar, or sidewalk lately.)
Unlike cigarettes, which often require a trip outside, there is not as much “built-in friction” to vaping. Dubin compared it to Netflix’s “Are you still watching” prompt—the conscious decision to light up and smoke a cigarette has a built-in check. According to Jones’s quiz data, a third of customers have also tried cigarettes as a way to cut back on vaping. “It’s just so backwards,” Dubin said.
Jones has some scientific heft behind its product, with Dr. David Kan, a distinguished fellow of addiction at the University of California, San Francisco, serving as its medical advisor. Kan assisted Jones with creating the quiz that Jones customers take to build a quitting program similar to what a doctor would recommend. The Jones app also offers cognitive behavioral therapy as well as daily tracking.
Blip also has a doctor on staff. Dr. Mark Rubinstein, the brand’s head of medical affairs, points out that there’s very little scientific evidence on quitting vaping. “Everyone’s sort of experimenting,” he said.
Rubinstein is an internal medicine doctor and adolescent medicine specialist. He started his medical career taking care of smokers in the ICU after they’d suffered a heart attack or stroke. Seeing some of these patients ask if they could step outside the hospital for a cigarette led Rubinstein to focus on preventing the habit from forming in the first place.
Rubinstein also spent a short stint at Juul, where he was brought on with the aim of preventing kids from using its product. Rubinstein said his idea was to push “banning flavors from the start, literally the minute I got there.”
Rubinstein describes Blip’s mission as trying to get young adults to consider quitting nicotine via FDA-approved treatments in a cool way, “but not so cool that we draw in recreational users.” He’ll tell you the product doesn’t taste the best, “because ours is medicine.”
When anything is better than smoking or vapingWhile Blip and Jones offer vape and cigarette off-ramps, one new nicotine company, Lucy, offers potentially safer products targeted to the ongoing nicotine user.
Founded by David Renteln, and Samy Hamdouche—the former founder and VP of research of Soylent, respectively—the company offers Zyn-style nicotine pouches and a product called “Breakers,” which are nicotine pouches with a little ball you crush for “extra flavor and hydration,” like a Zyn meets a Camel Crush. (Lucy also sells nicotine lozenges, which are FDA-approved as an NRT.)
Like Blip and Jones, there’s a personal angle to Lucy: Renteln promised his wife he’d stop his occasional cigarette habit, then discussed entering the nicotine business with Hamdouche, whose college roommate wrote his PhD thesis on nicotinic receptors in the brain.
Renteln says his “lightbulb moment” hit was when he understood that it was the smoke that made cigarettes harmful. “Since nicotine isn’t the principal agent of harm, I could continue to enjoy nicotine as long as I didn’t smoke," he said.
Hamdouche pointed out that a majority of people who use tobacco believe nicotine is what makes smoking harmful. “That’s obviously a misperception that needs to be corrected if we plan to move those users down the continuum of risk,” he said.
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Vapes are generally considered safer than smoking, but they have their own problems, starting with potentially harmful particles into the lungs. They can also become a pathway to higher nicotine consumption, Hamdouche said, pointing out that Lucy products have the specific dosages noted on their packaging, so customers can track their usage and wean down with lower nicotine strengths over time—if they want.
Challenging Big TobaccoThe disparate branding and approach of these companies underline the clear demand for nicotine: whether it’s college students looking to ditch their Elf Bar or tech bros looking for a Zyn alternative with less Tucker Carlson baggage.
What all of these companies have in common is an uphill battle against nicotine offerings from Big Tobacco, which now talks about a post-smoke future but still profit from cigarette sales. The old guard has huge marketing budgets and deep relationships with retailers (and their precious shelf space).
“Regardless of whether it's us, Blip, or Jones, it's good to see companies trying to innovate in this space,” Hamdouche said. But it’s a fight. “The regulatory environment is such that it’s basically favored towards cigarettes,” Renteln said. “It’s essentially easier to start a company that sells cigarettes than to start a company that sells potentially safer products.”
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Ashwin Rodrigues is a freelance writer. He often covers health, fitness, and things you might've heard on a podcast. He previously worked at Morning Brew as a business features reporter. Even more previous than that, he was a staff writer on the culture team at VICE. His byline can also... Read moreXRelated Stories for GQHealth