Nicotine Pouches Not Approved For Cessation

To The Readers’ Forum:

As expected, Gov. Hochul’s proposed excise tax on the sale of nicotine pouches, similar to taxes on other non-cigarette tobacco products, has supporters and detractors. I urge you not to accept claims that nicotine pouches, like Zyn, should be exempt from tobacco excise taxes because they are approved for smoking cessation. That’s wrong. There are a variety of FDA-approved, medically backed, safe nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), available both over-the-counter and by prescription. They provide controlled, standardized doses of nicotine (typically 2 mg or 4 mg) to gradually reduce addiction. Pouches are marketed in a much wider range of nicotine, some reaching concentrations up to 50 mg or higher per pouch, which can maintain and even increase addiction levels. And NRT flavors are restricted to basic options like mint to avoid appealing to youth. Pouches feature extensive, often sweet flavors like “Berry Frost” or “Mango Tango” which appeal to youth. New York State has finally seen a significant drop in youth vaping–just in time for the tobacco industry to come along with another new product to attract and addict our youth. Nicotine pouches are not approved for smoking cessation, and it is well known that tax increases on tobacco products reduce tobacco use, especially among youth.

The good news is if you are thinking about or want to quit tobacco use as New York State resident you have options. The first option is visiting the New York State Quitline at https://www.nysmokefree.com/ or contacting them at 1-866-697-8487 for free nicotine replacement therapy and counseling. The second option is to ask your doctor as they can prescribe nicotine replacement therapy and all health insurances cover some percentage of the costs.

Jonathan Chaffee

Olean

Wind Turbine Blade Waste Overstated

To the Readers’ Forum:

I love asking simple questions and doing simple math. A recent letter to the editor on the coming “red flag warnings” of waste from wind turbine blades heading for our landfills prompted the question; “How large of a problem is it?”

There are three operational wind farms in the county; Arkwright Summit (36 turbines), Cassadaga Wind (37 turbines), Ball Hill Wind (25 turbines). That’s a total of 98 turbines and 294 blades. Let’s round that up to 300 to make the math easier.

The expected lifespan of a wind turbine blade is 20 years, though that can be extended. The volume of a single wind turbine blade destined for a landfill is approximately 40 cubic yards and 120 cubic yards for a 3-blade turbine. Over the next 20 years, we can plan on 36,000 cubic yards of wind turbine blade ‘waste’ headed to the landfill. That sounds awful. When you look at the problem from a global perspective, it is even worse.

A recent scientific study, Wind turbine blade material in the United States: Quantities, costs, and end-of-life options, Cooperman, et al. looked at the problem. It found that by 2050 over 2 million tons of US turbine blades and 43 million tons globally are expected to be retired by 2050. Since the number of turbines installed 20 years ago was relatively small, the amount of waste to be dealt with today is also relatively small, and recycling efforts are underdeveloped. That being said, 85-90% of the mass of a wind turbine, concrete, steel, copper, etc. is currently being recycled, but turbine blades are notoriously difficult to re-process. The rapid rise of wind farm deployment and expected volume of waste has attracted heavy investment in solutions both at end of life and in developing new, more re-cyclable blade materials. For now, let us assume there will be no recycling breakthroughs in the next 20 or so years.

The county landfill utilized ~300,000 cubic yards of airspace (volume) in a recent reporting year. If things stay the same, over the next 20 years we can expect 6 million cubic yards of waste heading to the landfill with 36,000 of those being wind turbine blades. That comes to only 0.6% of the total. Over that time, the three wind farms will have generated 880 million kWh of electricity without generating any waste at all.

I admire and share the author’s concern for the amount of waste our society generates. I wish more people would pay attention to the very large amounts of waste all electricity generation creates. For example, approximately 1 million tons of solid waste is sent to Pennsylvania (and New York) landfills from fossil gas fracking operations annually. Between 2011 and 2017 Pennsylvania sent at least 600,000 tons of solid fracking waste to New York. In 2022, Pennsylvania’s fracking industry generated approximately 2.6 billion gallons of liquid waste (produced water). Roughly 44% of this water is reused for further fracturing operations, while the remainder is primarily sent to deep-well injection sites for disposal.

It appears the author’s time would be better spent looking at how to reduce the other 99.4% of the waste we generate, since wind turbine blades are not even close to our biggest problem.

Tom Meara

Jamestown