The World Heart Federation is proud to celebrate World No Tobacco Day with the global cardiovascular and tobacco control communities, under the theme Unmasking the Appeal: Exposing Industry Tactics on Tobacco and Nicotine Products.
Tobacco remains a major – yet entirely preventable – risk factor for cardiovascular disease, responsible for approximately 15% of all cardiovascular-related deaths in 2021. WHF believes that everyone, everywhere – from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood – has a right to be protected from the catastrophic health, social, economic, and environmental impacts of tobacco. Building on its 2024 campaign, Protecting Hearts, Safeguarding Futures, WHF continues to shed light on the tobacco industry’s manipulative strategies to promote its products, prioritizing profits over people’s lives.
The industry’s tactics are layered and insidious – including greenwashing, sportswashing, and the use of influencer campaigns, among others, that glamorize tobacco and nicotine use, especially targeting youth. The proliferation of flavouring agents is particularly concerning – with over 15’000 flavours catalogued to entice first-time users and foster early addiction. Equally alarming is the packaging of newer tobacco and nicotine products, deliberately designed to mimic toys, candies, or snacks. Bright colours, cartoon imagery, and playful shapes are intentionally used to attract the attention of children and adolescents.
The industry has aggressively targeted young people for decades, with misleading claims and misinformation to perpetuate nicotine addiction, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where regulations on advertising, promotion, sponsorship, and packaging are often more lenient or not strictly enforced. These strategies are calculated efforts to secure the next generation of users, as research consistently shows that youth exposed to such schemes are significantly more prone to use tobacco and nicotine products.
The rise of newer recreational tobacco and nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes, adds additional layers of complexity and urgency. These products are often falsely promoted as safer alternatives, supported by misleading marketing and biased industry-funded research. As a result, many are led to believe that these products are harmless. The World Heart Federation policy brief E-Cigarettes: A New Threat to Cardiovascular Health outlines the potential dangers of e-cigarettes, which can deliver nicotine doses equal to or even greater than conventional cigarettes. Our complementary policy brief Nicotine and Cardiovascular Health: When Poison Is Addictive highlights the harmful effects of nicotine itself, particularly for pregnant women, adolescents, and children.
The truth is clear: newer tobacco and nicotine products are designed to initiate and sustain nicotine addiction – not to serve as legitimate harm-reduction tools. Youth remain a critical target to ensure long-term industry profits. To protect current and future generations, the World Heart Federation urges governments and policymakers to:
- Ban flavouring agents in all tobacco and nicotine products;
- Fully implement Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to safeguard health policies from industry interference;
- Apply Article 6 of the WHO FCTC to increase taxes and reduce affordability of tobacco and nicotine products;
- Enforce Article 8 of the WHO FCTC to establish smoke- and emission-free environments, including from newer tobacco and nicotine products; and
- Uphold Article 13 of the WHO FCTC to eliminate all forms of advertising, promotion, and sponsorship.
The tobacco industry has a long history of systematic and deliberate interference in health and regulatory sciences. Through biased and deceptive industry-funded research, it has sought to sow unnecessary and harmful confusion and controversy among the public, scientists, and policymakers. WHF has adopted a strict conflict of interest policy to exclude tobacco industry representatives from all its events and congresses. WHF urges its Members and all health professional organizations to implement conflict of interest policies to uphold the integrity of science and protect health policies from tobacco industry interference.
Download our Conflict of Interest Toolkit to support implementation in your organization.
Together, we can unmask the appeal – and end the tobacco and nicotine pandemic once and for all.
