This is especially true among youth users: it is one of the main reasons why young people experience with tobacco or nicotine products in the first place, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).
Nicotine and flavored tobacco products are inherently addictive and toxic, often more than regular tobacco. Flavors increase use, make them neglect and have been linked to serious lung diseases, which they maintain.
Despite the decades of progress in tobacco control, taste products are attracting a new generation to addiction and contributing to eight million deaths related to tobacco every year.
Youth oriented marketing
Nicotine products are often sold directly towards young people through bright and colorful packaging with descriptors of sweet and fruity flavors.
Research shows that this type of advertising can trigger rewards centers in adolescent brains and weaken the impact of health warnings.
Young people also inform a growing presence of marketing of flavor nicotine products on all social networks platforms.
This marketing of flavors works in all forms of nicotine and tobacco products, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, cigarettes, bags and narguiles.
Who said flavors such as menthol, gum and cotton of sugar, are “masking the hardness of tobacco” and other nicotine products, turning what are toxic products “into friendly baits for youth.”
Call for action
Just ahead of World No Tobacco Day, the UN Health Agency launched a series of events of facts and asked governments to prohibit all flavors in tobacco and nicotine products to protect young people from addiction and lifelong disease.
He cited articles 9 and 10 of the successful 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which forces countries to regulate the content and dissemination of tobacco products, including flags.
Who boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that “Without bold action, the global tobacco epidemic … will continue to be driven by addiction dressed in attractive flavors.“
As of December 2024, more than 50 countries had adopted policies that regulate tobacco additives, with most aromatizers by prohibiting labels or images of flavors and restricting the sale of taste products. Some also control the use of taste during production.
However, WHO pointed out that tobacco companies and retailers have found ways to avoid these rules, offering flavored accessories, including aerosols, cards, capsules and filter tips, to add products without flavery.
Even so, who urges all 184 FCTC games (representing 90 percent of the world's population) to implement and enforce strong prohibitions and restrictions on taste products and related additives.
