Health
WHO: Tobacco industry wants to turn children into addicts
They look like colored felt-tip pens and are available in fruity flavors. Disposable e-cigarettes can quickly make children and young people addicted to nicotine, experts warn. photo
© Moritz Frankenberg/dpa
The tobacco industry says it is targeting e-cigarettes at smokers who want to quit tobacco. Pure tactics, says the WHO: flavors of chewing gum and the like are aimed at a different audience.
The tobacco industry is trying to follow a report from the World Health Organization (According to WHO) all sorts of tricks to get children addicted as young as possible. This includes marketing e-cigarettes in bright colors almost like toys, reported the WHO in Geneva. The situation in Europe is particularly worrying, said WHO department head Rüdiger Krech in Geneva. Sales restrictions would be of little use if young people could order the products on the Internet and the authorities did nothing to stop this.
Millions of minors are already addicted
According to the WHO, it is estimated that around 37 million teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15 already consume tobacco. This includes cigarettes, chewing tobacco and snuff. In addition, there are millions who use e-cigarettes. Although these do not contain tobacco, they do contain nicotine and are therefore addictive. Because e-cigarettes are sometimes expensive, many young people switch to tobacco products when they run out of money. In the WHO European region, 20 percent of 13- to 15-year-olds now say they have used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days.
Among the 16,000 flavors are those such as “chewing gum” and “candy,” which are clearly aimed at children. “History repeats itself: the tobacco industry is trying to sell our children the same nicotine in different packaging,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
WHO: Misleading advertising
According to the WHO, the fact that tobacco companies advertise their e-cigarettes as a product that helps people quit tobacco is just a pretext. “How can they talk about harm reduction when they are marketing these dangerous, highly addictive products to children?” Tedros said. The WHO denounces advertising in children’s colors and those with cartoon characters. In addition, influencers would be recruited who would advertise dangerous products as “cool” to their followers in exchange for payment. “The industry wants to get kids hooked as young as possible so that they become lifelong consumers,” said Given Kapolyo, who organizes young people in Zambia to educate their own youth groups about harmful nicotine use.
What countries should do
The WHO is urging countries to take more restrictive measures on the use of tobacco and other nicotine products, including banning flavoured e-cigarettes, banning advertising, increasing taxes and 100 per cent indoor smoking bans.