Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, conducted a first-of-its-kind analysis of how non- tobacco blunt wraps are being marketed as an attractive alternative, which could potentially reduce a blunt cannabis smoker’s exposure to harmful tobacco products.
Corresponding author, David Timberlake, PhD, associate professor of population health & disease prevention, and first author Joshua Rhee, a fifth-year doctoral candidate, both from the UCI Program in Public Health, published their findings in the journal Substance Use & Misuse.
The burden of disease and death from tobacco use in the United States is overwhelmingly caused by smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products. One such product are tobacco blunt wraps, which cannabis users have also adopted and are found to expose them to greater health risks than those who do not. Tobacco blunt wraps are often low-quality tobacco that holds cancerous toxins.
Utilizing the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) as an easily accessible tool for collecting data for research, the team examined the marketing presence of a new and less harmful form of blunt wrapper for tobacco and cannabis smokers, which is known as non-tobacco blunt wraps. A total of nearly 5,000 relevant tweets containing commercial or promotional material were collected and analyzed through a machine learning algorithm for thematic words to help understand the general interest and desire for non-tobacco blunt wraps. Machine learning algorithms receive and analyze input data to predict output values within an acceptable range.
The fate of this product will depend on a variety of factors ranging from policymakers to success in marketing the products to novice blunt smokers and established blunt smokers who may be receptive to a non-tobacco alternative.”
– Joshua Rhee, fifth-year doctoral student
Since the introduction of non-tobacco blunt wraps into the marketplace in 2017, adoption of the product does not compare to many of the other tobacco and cannabis products. The study’s finding found that the most relevant tweets (89%) were intended for non-promotional purposes where in contrast, 90% of tweets pertaining to e-cigarettes were commercial. Although most of the tweets were non-promotional, the study found that non-tobacco blunt wraps were being discussed as a potential alternative.
“We have not yet seen the over advertisement of non-tobacco blunt wraps,” said Rhee. “The fate of this product will depend on a variety of factors ranging from policymakers to success in marketing the products to novice blunt smokers and established blunt smokers who may be receptive to a non-tobacco alternative.”
Timberlake added, “the intensity of online non-tobacco blunt wraps marketing may soon change, due to X (formerly known as Twitter) recently removing marketing restrictions on cannabis paraphernalia, and as more states follow to ban flavors in tobacco products, which is a key component of tobacco-based blunt smoking.”
This study was supported by the University of California’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) and the National Science Foundation. Additional authors include doctoral students Yicong Huang, Sadeem Alsudais, Shengquan Ni, and Avinash Kumar, and Professor Chen Li, all from UCI Department of Computer Sciences; and Aurash J. Soroosh from the Public Health Institute.
