Center for Rapid Surveillance of Tobacco (CRST) will perform surveillance of tobacco product marketing, the tobacco product marketplace, and tobacco use behaviors, transforming tobacco surveillance to be rapid, comprehensive, and coordinated, with salient findings fed immediately into traditional data collection systems. By identifying and evaluating signals in a timely fashion, the CRST will generate critical actionable information about changes in tobacco products which can inform FDA’s regulation of tobacco products leading to a substantial public health impact.
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Tobacco Industry Monitoring (TIM) Alert
Tobacco Industry Marketing (TIM) Alerts provide weekly newsletters to subscribers to keep up to date with tobacco industry marketing and emerging tobacco products.
Excerpt from the Oct 17, 2025 TIM Alert
CIGARETTES
VLN cigarettes, which have exposure modifications orders from FDA to make certain reduced exposure claims regarding nicotine, have new packaging, as shown on their website. The former packs were previously white with a stripe in the middle with the brand name and the modified exposure claim on the top of the pack. The new packs are black with less prominent modified exposure claims. The pack also now states that VLN is “American’s lowest nicotine cigarettes.”
MODERN ORAL NICOTINE PRODUCTS
Nate Bargatze, a popular comedian who recently hosted the 77th Emmy Awards, performed at a ZYN Presents show in Nashville, Tennessee on October 11, as documented by attendee @calvin.givens on Instagram and members of Reddit. The exclusive tickets were only available to ZYN Rewards members at the cost of 3,000 points for 2 tickets.