World No Tobacco Day 2020: protecting youth
31 May 2020
On 31 May 2020 WHO and public health champions around the world will come together to celebrate World No Tobacco Day. This global campaign emphasizes the achievements and progress made throughout the year towards a tobacco-free world.
This year’s theme is protection of younger generations, focusing on “Protecting youth from industry manipulation and preventing them from tobacco and nicotine use”. As the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting young people as an emerging and vulnerable market for its addictive products, this is a pressing issue and a challenge for tobacco control policy-makers in every country.
According to 2015 data, 17% of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 smoke worldwide. In the European Region 11.5% of girls and 13.8% of boys between the ages of 13 and 15 are tobacco users. Although this has been decreasing over the years as a result of phenomenal efforts by the tobacco control community, more must be done to safeguard these vulnerable groups. As the tobacco industry is well aware, a person who starts smoking before their early 20s is not only more likely to develop an addiction but may also have an impaired ability to exercise control over smoking later in life. The industry wilfully sells a deadly dependency to young people, and with youth protection as the core theme of World No Tobacco Day 2020, 31 May is a chance to showcase the best practices to counter these efforts.
How the industry targets youth
In its efforts to manipulate young people, the tobacco industry has resorted to embellishing products to make them more appealing to specific demographics, particularly via packaging or branding. This has been especially evident in the recent explosion of interest in e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. One of the most significant innovations by the industry involves its marketing strategies. Across sectors, advertising is increasingly moving online and the tobacco industry is no different – tobacco companies are turning more and more to social media influencers to market these dangerous products. Such advertisements often circumvent traditional tobacco advertising and promotion regulation as the tobacco product placement is not flagged as an advertisement, and instead surreptitiously embedded in other social media content. This issue is especially concerning in the case of young women and girls, who are a prime target for influencer exposure.
World No Tobacco Day 2020 will demonstrate how young people can be empowered to take control of their health and reject tobacco addiction. World No Tobacco Day also calls on the tobacco control community to protect these groups via campaigns and interventions across society, to build resilience among the next generation of young people against tobacco and to move steadily towards a tobacco-free future.
