Tobacco industry 'aggressively targeting' young people to boost sales of vapes and e-cigarettes, WHO warns

Taoiseach Micheal Martin with director general of the World Health Organization Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at the World Conference on Tobacco Control at the Convention Centre, Dublin. Picture: Sasko Lazarov/ RollingNews.ie

The World Health Organization has warned the tobacco industry is “aggressively targeting” young people to boost sales of vapes and e-cigarettes even as governments target tobacco sales.

Governments have been urged to resist industry interference in their tobacco control policies.

The World Conference on Tobacco Control, which opened in Dublin on Monday, also heard the war in Ukraine had led to increased e-cigarette use among young people.

A WHO report published on Monday found a series of health measures — known as Mpower — now cover more than 6.1 billion people, representing over 75% of the world’s population.

These include monitoring of tobacco use, offering help to quit, and raising taxes. However, the WHO warned about limited use of taxes, even though this is seen as the single most useful measure in reducing tobacco use.

Ireland is one of just 14 countries with total tax on tobacco at or above 75% recorded in every WHO report on this topic since 2008.

WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomed increased use of these measures, but warned about rising use of e-cigarettes.

“The tobacco and related industries are aggressively targeting young people with e-cigarettes and other new and emerging nicotine and tobacco products,” he said.

The evidence is clear: e-cigarettes are harmful, particularly for children and adolescents. We cannot allow a new generation to become dependent on nicotine. Protecting young people from these products must be a top priority.

He called on governments to make sure “tobacco control policies remain robust in the face of industry interference". 

Tobacco is “responsible for over seven million deaths annually, as well as disability and long-term suffering from tobacco-related diseases”, the report said.

Many speakers focused on links between tobacco use and non-communicable disease (NCD) such as cancer or stroke.

NCD Alliance policy and advocacy adviser Alison Cox said: “Every second, 28 people lose their lives to an NCD and of those, 25 live in low- or middle-income countries” today.

These illnesses, including those caused by tobacco use, cost global economies trillions of euro every year, she pointed out.

“There are industries out there — tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy foods, fossil fuels driving air pollution — who are making massive profit, and they’re externalising their costs onto the rest of the economy,” she warned.

A speaker from Ukraine described how young people were vaping more now in parallel with increased tobacco use since the all-out Russian invasion in 2022.

Andrii Skipalskyi, unit lead for NCD management at the WHO Ukraine country office, said work on public health had continued despite the pressures of the war.

“We fight and we continue reforms, we can’t abandon it,” he said.

He described how data shows conflict-related problems, including young people being displaced from their homes, is “clearly associated” with use of e-cigarettes and tobacco products in parallel.

“We can see that in the adult population we don’t observe any increase in smoking prevalence despite the war and hard economic and socio-economic circumstances,” he said.

However, a trend for downward use among young people is changing, he explained.

He described this as “a mixed picture”, saying they can now see “a slight increase” in use of products such as heated tobacco and e-cigarettes.

Their data showed this is linked to poly-use — people using tobacco products and e-cigarettes or heated tobacco.