How the tobacco industry targets young people to achieve a new generation of smokers

Friday, May 29th, 2020 | tedla55p | No Comments

Janet Hoek, Richard Edwards, Anaru Waa

This year’s World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) focusses on the tobacco industry’s continued targeting of young people, whose addiction to nicotine will help ensure the industry’s on-going profitability. World Smokefree Day’s social media handle #tobaccoexposed reminds us that, despite a new-found interest in ‘unsmoking’ the world, and moving smokers to “reduced harm” products, tobacco companies continue to develop and promote smoked tobacco products that will appeal to young people. In this blog, we explore how tobacco companies have continued to recruit young people to smoked tobacco; we discuss their efforts to infiltrate public health agendas while continuing to innovate with smoked tobacco, and explain why strong policies and industry denormalisation strategies are vital to ensuring young people remain nicotine free.

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Targeting a new generation – time for a greater focus on smoking uptake prevention?

Friday, May 29th, 2020 | tedla55p | No Comments

Richard Edwards, Janet Hoek, Andrew Waa

The theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) is how the tobacco industry continues to target young people and recruit new generations to smoking. It is accompanied by a call to action to recruit young people to join the fight for them to become a tobacco-free generation. So how could this year’s WNTD theme inform New Zealand’s smokefree activities and, specifically, how does it relate to efforts to achieve a Smokefree Aotearoa? In this blog, we argue for greatly increasing actions to minimise smoking uptake by youth and young adults so we can achieve a Smokefree Aotearoa equitably and sustainably.

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Smoke, heat or vapour? Ideas for risk-proportionate regulation to make World Smokefree Day irrelevant by 2025

Thursday, May 31st, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Richard Edwards, Anaru Waa, Janet Hoek, Louise Thornley, Nick Wilson.

ASPIRE 2025, Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington

World Smokefree Day is an apt day on which to propose some ideas that may greatly increase momentum for the achieving Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. Tobacco and vaping products such as e-cigarettes vary greatly in their likely adverse health effects and overall impact on population health. Reflecting this, the Ministry of Health announced in May that it will investigate ‘risk-proportionate’ regulation for tobacco and vaping products. This blog discusses public health considerations in developing the new regulatory framework, and proposes key features of a risk-proportionate approach. We argue the framework should aim to minimise harm and maximise benefits to population health by accelerating progress towards New Zealand’s Smokefree 2025 goal. As well as clarifying the appropriate regulatory approaches to vaping products, we see an overwhelming need for much stronger regulation of smoked tobacco products, as these are vastly under-regulated in relation to the harm they cause.

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