By Guardian Reporter , The Guardian
THE tobacco industry actively targets teens with new tactics, and an estimated 37m children worldwide aged between 13 and 15 years use tobacco, on the basis of a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, made this affirmation in a statement accompanying the report, launched in collaboration with STOP, a global tobacco industry watchdog.
He cautioned that in many countries, the rate of e-cigarette use among adolescents exceeds that of adults, citing the WHO European region, where 20 percent of 15-year-olds surveyed reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.
Despite significant progress in reducing tobacco use, the emergence of e-cigarettes and other tobacco and nicotine products presents a grave threat to youth and tobacco control, the report underlined.
“History is repeating itself, as the tobacco industry tries to sell the same nicotine to our children in different packaging,” the director intoned, specifying that tobacco firms are actively targeting schools, children and young people with new products that are essentially a candy-flavoured trap.
“How can they talk about harm reduction when they are marketing these dangerous, highly-addictive products to children?”
The report said more than 70 percent of youth e-cigarette users would quit if the products were available only in tobacco flavour, rather than enticing flavours like candy and fruit.
Ruediger Krech, the WHO director of health promotion, said in the statement that tobacco firms are intentionally designing products and utilising marketing strategies that appeal directly to children.
“The use of child-friendly flavours like cotton candy and bubble gum, combined with sleek and colourful designs that resemble toys, is a blatant attempt to addict young people to these harmful products.”
The deceptive tactics underline the immediate need for strong regulations to protect young people from a lifetime of harmful dependence, said the report.
The WHO urged governments to protect young people from the uptake of tobacco, e-cigarettes and other nicotine products by banning or tightly regulating the products.
Jorge Alday, the STOP director at Vital Strategies, said that addicted youth represent a lifetime of profits to the industry. “That’s why the industry aggressively lobbies to create an environment that makes it cheap, attractive and easy for youth to get hooked.
“If policy makers don’t act, current and future generations may be facing a new wave of harm, characterized by addiction to and use of many tobacco and nicotine products, including cigarettes.”
Youth advocates around the world are taking a stand against the tobacco and nicotine industry’s destructive influence and manipulative marketing. They are exposing these deceptive practices and advocating for their own tobacco-free future.
Youth organisations from around the world participated in the latest session of the Conference of the Parties to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (COP10) to deliver a powerful message to policy makers.
“Future generations will remember you as the ones who protected them or the ones who failed them and put them in danger,’ the COP10 declaration asserted.
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